Bottlenecks in coronavirus tests mean excruciating wait
LOS ANGELES — Two weeks ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that help was on the way for people wanting to be tested for the coronavirus.
A commercial laboratory called Quest Diagnostics, he said, would process 1,200 tests a day at its facility in San Juan Capistrano and quickly ramp up production to 5,500 per day.
“We’re increasing our capacity on an hourly basis,” Newsom said.
Yet it wasn’t just Newsom and Californians counting on Quest’s Capistrano lab.
Hospitals, doctors and governments across the country were being encouraged by the company and federal officials to send COVID-19 tests to that single Southern California lab for processing.
The deluge of samples caused a bottleneck that delayed turnaround times for results at a critical time, when doctors were struggling to identify those who had been infected, including among their own staff, to contain the spread of the virus.
The delays at the Capistrano lab highlight another early failure in the problemplagued testing process: the inability of commercial labs to quickly ramp up processing of the tests, despite promises from Newsom and other politicians.
The wait for test results has reached eight days at Emergency Medicine Specialists of Orange County, where doctors worry that patients may have infected staff members. Without timely test results from Quest, it’s uncertain whether they should continue caring for patients, said Dr. David Merin, an emergency room physician.
“Once they’ve been exposed, do you just have them work through the illness?” Merin asked. “Or pull them out of work until they have answers?”
The commercial labs have been viewed as a crucial component in the complex and far-flung testing process. Quest’s top executive, Stephen Rusckowski, was among the health care executives who stood by President Donald Trump on March 13 as Trump announced “a new partnership with the private sector to vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus.”
“We want to make sure that those who need a test can get a test very safely, quickly and conveniently,” Trump said.
But the commercial labs have struggled to meet expectations as the already problem-plagued testing process exposed their shortcomings. They and the public and hospital labs processing the COVID-19 tests have run short on technicians and key chemicals.
And two weeks ago, they even made a plea for more funding after Vice President Mike Pence promised that the tests would be free for all Americans.