State narrows testing priority as virus cases surge

SACRAMENTO » With coronavirus cases rising fast, California overhauled its guidelines Tuesday for who can be tested, prioritizing people who are hospitalized with symptoms, those in close contact with infected people or when necessary to control an outbreak.

The new guidelines say people without symptoms and not in essential jobs won’t be prioritized for testing until results can be turned around in less than 48 hours. Spokespeople for the state health department didn’t respond to a question about the current average wait time.

The changes come as the state faces testing shortages and long wait times for results as new outbreaks pop up around the state. Los Angeles County, home to a quarter of the state’s population, reported a record 4,244 additional cases on Tuesday. Nine percent of people tested in the county are positive for the virus, higher than the state’s rate of 7%.

To stem the surge of cases, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday closed malls, hair salons, gyms and other indoor businesses in most of the state, and barred inside religious services.

“This is all done while we are in parallel working to increase testing capacity across the state,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.

The new testing methods are designed to help California zero in on outbreaks spread among essential workers or by gatherings of family and friends. Getting test results more quickly in areas of potential outbreak is important to the state’s ability to contain the spread, Ghaly said.

Dr. Hala Madanat, director of the School of Public Health at San Diego State University, said the new rules make sense given the limited availability of testing. She said she’s heard of people who have symptoms waiting several days to get tests, which makes it harder to control the spread.

“It would be ideal if we had all these tests approved and available and we could test all the asymptomatic people and do surveillance, but it’s not realistic at where we are right now in the supply chain,” she said.

Meanwhile, the state’s increased transmission level has made contact tracing harder, Ghaly acknowledged. About 7,800 people are testing positive a day, and the state has 10,000 contact tracers reaching out to people who have been in close contact with infected individuals. The state is testing about 107,000 people per day.

“We did not build the current contact tracing program on this level of transmission,” Ghaly said.