‘I’VE LOST HOPE ON GETTING A TEST’
She had pneumonia, a fever and a dry cough — and still couldn’t get tested for coronavirus
Laura Koch was enjoying a show at the Chicago Theater earlier this month when a cough that started earlier in the day got worse and she developed a fever.
She left at intermission, and by the following day she developed more symptoms consistent with the coronavirus, including shortness of breath and vomiting.
Though she’s tried repeatedly to get tested for COVID-19, her efforts have proved fruitless.
For nearly 10 days, city and state officials, emergency room doctors and even her personal physician have rebuffed her requests. Despite being diagnosed with pneumonia — which can be caused by the novel coronavirus — Koch didn’t meet the state’s threshold for testing because she hadn’t come into contact with a person that tested positive or traveled to a hotbed for the disease, like China or Italy.
“I’m really frustrated with our whole system,” said Koch, a sales trainer for a food service company who remains self-quarantined in her Uptown apartment. “We hear that all these tests are available, but they’re obviously not.”
Koch isn’t the only person who has been shut down while seeking a test for COVID-19, which had sickened at least 105 in Illinois as of Monday. While federal authorities have repeatedly promised that wide-ranging testing would soon be available, more Americans are left waiting as the number of confirmed cases continues to rise nationwide.
Dr. Robert Murphy, director of the Global Institute for Public Health at Northwestern University, said anyone that’s even exhibiting “minor symptoms” should already be getting tested — but mistakes at the federal level in not ramping up testing sooner have limited capacity, leading to the severe restrictions. Now, to make more tests available, it’s not as easy as simply “flipping a switch,” he said.
“I think that the [Trump] administration and the running of this whole process has been really abysmal,” said Murphy.
‘Precious time has been lost’
Members of Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday said the expansion of drive-through testing and the addition of more commercial labs would vastly increase the capabilities for coronavirus testing.
As of Sunday, only 84 public labs across the country were conducting tests for the coronavirus, according to the CDC. However, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giror said the country is now “entering a new phase of testing” during a White House press briefing on Monday.
Giror, who is serving as Trump’s testing czar, said a million tests were currently available across the country, primarily at commercial labs. Nearly 2 million tests will be added this week, said Giror.
But Gov. J.B. Pritzker was skeptical and laid into the Trump administration’s response to the outbreak at his own press conference Monday.
“We need the federal government to lead, follow or get out of the way,” Pritzker said before urging the FDA to approve COVID-19 tests that have already been approved in Europe and Asia. “Precious time has been lost.”
Only 1,143 people in Illinois had been tested for coronavirus by Monday, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Pritzker did acknowledge that a move by federal authorities to allow hospitals and research facilities to develop their own tests has expanded the state’s capability to test for the virus.
‘This will spread throughout our community’
A day after leaving the show early, Koch went to an urgent care center March 8 and was diagnosed with pneumonia after vomiting and experiencing a fever, dry cough and shortness of breath.
When things got worse later that day, she wound up at the emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where she was diagnosed with an “unidentified viral infection” and given fluids and ibuprofen to treat nausea and the 102-degree fever she was running. She was discharged once the fever was brought down and told to use honey as a cough suppressant.
The following day, she went to her clinician after her cough had become so painful she felt like she was suffocating.
Northwestern officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Koch said she was told she wasn’t given a COVID-19 test because she didn’t meet the IDPH’s standards for coronavirus testing. In addition to symptoms, qualifying patients must come into contact with a COVID-19 patient within 14 days of displaying symptoms; traveling to an area hit hard by the disease within 14 days of onset; living or working at shared housing or health care facility; having a high-risk of infection; being hospitalized; or raising other public health concerns.
If patients don’t meet the criteria, health care providers can still “proceed with testing at a commercial or clinical laboratory,” according to the IDPH.
“Not everyone needs to be tested for COVID-19,” IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said Monday.
But Koch said “it’s insane” that she hasn’t been able to get a test.
“This will spread throughout our community because we don’t have the knowledge to know if we are sick or not,” she predicted. “I’ve lost hope on getting a test.”