New challenge for U.S. virus testing: Lab supply shortages
— First, some of the coronavirus tests didn’t work. Then there weren’t enough to go around. Now, just as the federal government tries to ramp up nationwide screening, laboratory workers are warning of a new roadblock: dire shortages of testing supplies.
The shortages are the latest stumble in a botched effort to track the spread of coronavirus that has left the U.S. weeks behind many other developed countries. Dwindling supplies include both chemical components and basic swabs needed to collect patient samples.
There are “acute, serious shortages across the board” for supplies needed to do the tests, said Eric Blank, of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local health labs.
Blank said government labs in the U.S. are competing for supplies with larger commercial labs and governments around the world. In conference calls this week with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some lab staff warned that they may have to shut down testing within days due to lack of compo- nents, Blank said.
Wide scale testing is a crit- ical part of tracking and con- taining infectious diseases like COVID-19. But the U.S. effort has been plagued by a series of missteps, includ- ing accuracy problems with tests the CDC sent to other labs and bureaucratic hurdles that slowed the entrance of large, private sector labs.
With the virus spreading, officials in the U.S. have shifted focus from tracking the virus to extraordinary measures to blunt its damage. On Thursday California’s governor told its 40 million residents to stay home indefinitely and venture outside only for essential jobs.
But public health experts stress that policymakers are “flying blind” in deciding how to manage the pandemic.
“The only way to get through it without testing is to keep the entire country quarantined for the next 18 months,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a Harvard University global health professor. “That obviously is untenable.”
Jha and his colleagues say the U.S. should be screening 100,000 to 150,000 people per day. The current rate is roughly 20,000 per day, he estimates, though it is accel- erating as larger commercial companies ramp up testing.
The director of Missouri’s state lab said Friday that his facility is facing shortages of swabs, liquids to store patient samples and kits to develop the results. Many labs are having similar problems, said Bill Whitmar.
“Quite frankly, 95% to 98% of the talk between lab directors has been about the shortage of supplies,” Whit- mar said.
At this point only 500 swabs are available. And the lab only has supplies to last through Tuesday, he reported.
The Jefferson City lab does only a fraction of the coronavirus testing performed in Missouri, with commercial labs now doing the largest share. But Whitmar’s lab is where tests are run on the people most likely to be infected in that state.
The shortages have become a central concern in increasingly urgent communications among governors and federal officials.
“Most of my phone calls today have been a bout swabs,” Gov. Gina Raimondo said during a Tuesday news conference. “That’s our big issue at the moment.”
The Trump administration’s top health official suggested Friday that the “anecdotal” reports of shortages are caused by confusion about how to find alternative supplies.
“Usually it’s that the lab people do not understand that there are alternative supplies in the marketplace that they are perfectly free to use,” Azar told reporters in a briefing at the White House. He said the federal government is purchasing and shipping swabs to states.
Whitmar, the Missouri lab director, said many suppliers just don’t have the products in stock.
“An order is not a swab in hand,” he said.