What's the status of testing these days? It sounds like we aren't much better off than we were two weeks ago.

Does anyone have any recent first hand experience?

From what I'm reading, the Abbott tests that are really quick are available in such limited numbers that it's not really meaningful.

Hopefully someone has some good news on that front.

Idk about testing. But belton I'm glad your dad is negative. Chemo and this crap would not go together well at all.

speaking of chemo - good friend of mine retired, currently undergoing chemo & living in Seattle. Wife works for county. 20 yr old daughter at the house. Daughter is sick and doctors "say" daughter has virus, but they WON'T test. Suspicion wife has virus, has some symptoms but apparently not as bad as daughter.
Daughter staying in basement with separate entrance. Wife staying in 1/2 house separate from husband. None of them "qualify" for testing. Ridiculous.

Im in Los Angeles county. they opened up a website today where anyone and everyone can apply to sign up for a test.

have to answer three questions:

1. Are you under a mandatory 14 day quarantine due to a confirmed COVID-19 exposure (with more than 7 days of the quarantine remaining)?

2. Are you experiencing flu-like symptoms, such as cough, fever, and shortness of breath?

3. Are you over 65 years old or suffering a serious chronic medical condition?

I played with the site a little - a 'yes' answer to any question gets you access to sign up. Im feeling fine now so I'll hold off on getting one, let the sick folk get tested first

Quote:

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"Test appointments are available for the same day or following day for symptomatic individuals 65 or older or who have underlying health conditions, or are subject to a mandatory quarantine order. All other individuals who meet the broader eligibility criteria may schedule appointments two days in advance."

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Quote:

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Test results may take up to five days to get back. Positive result news will be delivered by phone. Negative result news will be delivered by email.

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I can't speak for everywhere, but my cousin works at Parkland In Dallas and they process tests for admitted in about 45 minutes. That doesn't apply to their driveup test.

I wish testing would get to the point where you could just drive to the drug store and get one, like pregnancy tests.

If positive, then email your doc the results and he\she sends you an rx for the hydroxychloroquine + zpac or the equivalent, latest successful drug.

The Coronavirus Update site now lists numbers of tests for countries world-wide as well as state-by-state.

The number of tests as of this moment is: 2,075,739 which is a million more tests than the next country with the most (Germany).

Also on the USA Chart the number of tests is broken out by state. It lists 88,649 as the number of tests in Texas. I'm assuming those numbers are the number of tests with results one way or another.

Of particular interest to me is the number of tests by 1mm population. That's where you see how the states and countries actually compare.

Cheetah01 said:

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It's there. Texas is 49th out of 50. Wow, that's pretty bad.

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That's not the relevant statistic though. The relevant statistic is the number of tests performed per person who a doctor requests one for.

Sorry, my post was mostly frustration with the absolutely incorrect information being disseminated daily from this administration. This whole situation would be so much better if we were getting to straight story from the top.

Most people realize the medical community has been handling this with both hands tied behind their backs. Your efforts are incredibly appreciated.

My aunt in Seattle is in the ICU. They gave her two tests, both negative. Same day results. She's there for other issues, but the tests got her to the non COVID ICU. I was shocked how quickly they had results.

I wish you could get one at the local jack in the box

My BIL took a test in Travis County at Baylor Scott & White at 3PM last Monday and had his positive result back the next morning. He didn't have anything pressing driving the results. He only suffered from lack of taste. My wife took a test the same Monday at our primary care physician and got her positive result back on Saturday. I guess maybe a different lab doing the work?

ec2004 said:

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Necrosis,

Thank you for your valuable input. Can I get your perspective (or that of other docs on the board)?

It feels like we've been hearing of the coming wave for some time. While the intensity of the illness is clear, with the exception of NYC my perception is that most hospitals are hollowed out and generally waiting for the wave's arrival. Is this in mine or different from your experience?

Side note: I feel like I've gotten better information from this board than any other new source. Thanks!

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Sometimes I feel like a NASA scientist trying to explain that an asteroid will hit us in 4 weeks and people argue back that this is not possible because it hasn't happened yet. I don't know what to say. No news is good news. The more we can delay the better. (see link below).

The healthcare forecasts are alarming, however, the good news (at least so far) is that human behavior is the main coefficient and the more we can physically distance the better the outcome will be. From the frontline, I see a massive pullback of the tide. This happened in Italy as well just before the surge. So I don't feel super confident that it will be different here. I've also watched as weeks went by as we slowly turned off the faucet as the rest of the world, less the UK, made quick decisions to shut off the faucet. Physicians in Italy were quoted as saying while watching America respond to this crisis "was like watching a horror movie" because they did the same and they wished they had acted sooner.

Texas has been hit or miss as each county basically took control of when they enacted shelter in place measures instead of enacting a statewide measure. I'm not in a place to argue whether this was the best decision or not but history will give us better insight. Most counties from what I could tell were slightly behind the curve if not on the curve, however, many underserved counties fell behind because they had "no active cases" even though most of the state is medically underserved. This will likely create a burden on our main tertiary medical facilities and I hope that they are not overwhelmed.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

Best of luck but if I had the numbers you posted, those would be the best I had in years!!

Good luck with your test results!

While I haven't been directly working on the floor/ICU of my program's hospital in the TMC (and albeit I'm a Pediatrician), I heard our hospital has had a pretty low census for the past few weeks. I've heard the adult side of the hospital has been much more busy, but based on the emails I've gotten, they're pretty confident they have plenty of room for a coming surge of patients.

Cheetah01 said:

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It's there. Texas is 49th out of 50. Wow, that's pretty bad.

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Yeah. The only thing is that we have a large population spread out. I wish I could see the county by county testing numbers.

Our cases and death numbers are really low compared to some other states.

You know what I really wonder about? What's happening to the large homeless populations in California, particularly, but everywhere else too? I haven't heard any stats on them at all.

ORAggieFan said:

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My aunt in Seattle is in the ICU. They gave her two tests, both negative. Same day results. She's there for other issues, but the tests got her to the non COVID ICU. I was shocked how quickly they had results.

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Pretty sure UW , after the CDC test was determined to be inadequate, developed their own test.

When DJT talks about how testing is partially the states responsibility ( which I think is blame shifting and complete non-sense) he is probably alluding to the testing success out of UW

nortex97 said:

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Sq 17 said:

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When DJT talks about how testing is partially the states responsibility ( which I think is blame shifting and complete non-sense) he is probably alluding to the testing success out of UW

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Well, you may someday get over hating Trump and realize that each state runs its own lab inspection organization. For instance, in Texas, whether a lab is accredited by CAP, JCAHO, or the others, lab accreditation and record keeping etc. is handled from a regulatory perspective at the state level.

Besides, I highly doubt he'd be referencing a single IDN's testing regimen. Avoiding the false negative rates of the Chinese and South Korean tests is part of the reason it took us so comparatively long to get a rapid test to the market.

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Can you provide some evidence to back this statement up? Just curious because South Korea did rapid testing early on and is widely considered to be one of the countries to better manage this crisis.

It's really pretty complicated, and while I've been unable to get a copy of their test's package insert, it has been quietly reported that their false negative rate is actually around 30 percent. For a rapid test rushed to market/production so quickly that is unsurprising.

They also benefited from (essentially) the whole population having masks on hand for their annual yellow pollen season. Yes, our fake news has failed to report that their disciplined population was actually wholly prepared with largely N95 level masks because it's always that filthy there in March to need to wear them in their population centers.

None of what you linked attributes the lack of tests in the U.S. to inaccurate tests from China or South Korea. If South Korea's tests were so inaccurate, how would they have quickly got the virus under control? That 30% number comes from pure speculation by one individual in the article and he doesn't even mention South Korea. By every account I've read, South Korea used tests developed by the WHO which were fairly accurate, whereas the administration and the CDC shunned these tests and tried to develop it's own test which turned out to be highly inaccurate.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-coronavirus-testing-while-the-us-fell-dangerously-behind

RockOn said:

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Too many anecdotes on this board. Not enough data.

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I have to wonder about the accuracy of this data. The big counties in the Houston area are intentionally NOT reporting total tests performed. They claim they can't keep track of the data from private labs and they only report positive test results, not negative results or total tests performed.

I call BS on not being able to keep track of the data, I just think some local agencies don't wan't to be bothered with it.

Also -

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Health departments in Harris County, Houston and Fort Bend County released a statement saying they will not disclose the number of patients they have tested until this point, claiming the information would "lead to misinformation, which can create unnecessary, often confused, alarmed public reaction."

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https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/health/coronavirus/only-one-houston-area-county-will-release-number-of-covid-19-tests-performed/285-df63b4aa-381a-4cac-bcf9-cfc754ce4dad

Dr.HeadCase said:

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None of what you linked attributes the lack of tests in the U.S. to inaccurate tests from China or South Korea. If South Korea's tests were so inaccurate, how would they have quickly got the virus under control? That 30% number comes from pure speculation by one individual in the article and he doesn't even mention South Korea. By every account I've read, South Korea used tests developed by the WHO which were fairly accurate, whereas the administration and the CDC shunned these tests and tried to develop it's own test which turned out to be highly inaccurate.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-south-korea-scaled-coronavirus-testing-while-the-us-fell-dangerously-behind

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I wish people would stop comparing the US to South Korea. South Korea is about the size of Indiana.

It's like comparing apples to an 18-wheeler. They aren't even in the same universe.

I don't see how what they did or didn't do has any relation to how things can/should/did work here.

I think everyone, including Orange Man Bad, wants us to have plenty of tests and reliable information. But it's just not nearly as easy as the "BUT SOUTH KOREA DID IT!" People want to make it out to be.

Of course the logistics of addressing a pandemic may be more challenging for a country with a larger population (although you could argue larger countries may also have more resources than smaller countries), but we shouldn't ignore the strategies used by countries that managed to get this under wraps fairly quickly. Surely we will want to pay attention to Sweden's approach of herd immunity to see if it can inform us? Or should we just throw that out because they're so much smaller in population size? Some people just seem to have trouble accepting it's possible that the U.S. has made some serious mistakes in response to this pandemic.

And by the way, South Korea is about 7 times larger in population than Indiana (about 50 million).

Dr.HeadCase said:

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Of course the logistics of addressing a pandemic may be more challenging for a country with a larger population (although you could argue larger countries may also have more resources than smaller countries), but we shouldn't ignore the strategies used by countries that managed to get this under wraps fairly quickly. Surely we will want to pay attention to Sweden's approach of herd immunity to see if it can inform us? Or should we just throw that out because they're so much smaller in population size? Some people just seem to have trouble accepting it's possible that the U.S. has made some serious mistakes in response to this pandemic.

And by the way, South Korea is about 7 times larger in population than Indiana (about 50 million).

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I'd rather live in Indiana.