Surge of COVID-19 cases in US causes testing delays

Washington: The surge in COVID-19 cases across the United States has resulted in delays in processing and delivering test results, a leading U.S. diagnostic service company said.

Quest Diagnostics, one of the companies performing a significant amount of COVID-19 testing in the United States, said its average time to get test results back was now “7 or more days” for everyone except the highest-priority patients, meaning people who are hospitalised or symptomatic health care workers.

“Despite our rapid scaling up of capacity, soaring demand for COVID-19 molecular diagnostic tests across the U.S is slowing the time in which we can provide test results,” said.