Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
For many, virus testing ‘a hot mess’
Confirmed infections top 3 million in US as cases still soaring
LOS ANGELES — For two weeks, Rachael Jones has stayed home, going without a paycheck while waiting for the results of a COVID-19 test from a pharmacy near Philadelphia.
“I’m just so disappointed. I just don’t know how — with the resources and the people we have and the money we have — we can’t get this right,” she said.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the country surpassed 3 million Wednesday. But after four months into the outbreak and over 132,000 deaths, Americans confronted with a resurgence of the scourge are facing long lines at testing sites in the summer heat or are getting turned away. Others are going a week or more without receiving a diagnosis.
Some sites are running out of kits, while labs are reporting shortages of materials and workers to process the swabs.
Some frustrated Americans are left to wonder why the U.S. can’t seem to get its act together, especially after it was given fair warning as the virus wreaked havoc in China and then Italy, Spain and New York.
“It’s a hot mess,” said Jennifer Hudson, 47, of Tucson, Arizona. “The fact that we’re relying on companies and we don’t have a national response to this, it’s ridiculous. It’s keeping people who need tests from getting tests.”
It took Hudson five days to make an appointment through a CVS pharmacy near her home. She booked a drive-up test over the weekend, more than a week after her symptoms — fatigue, shortness of breath, headache and sore throat — first emerged. The clinic informed her that her results would probably be delayed.
Testing has been ramped up nationwide, reaching about 640,000 tests per day on average, up from around 518,000 two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis. Newly confirmed infections per day in the U.S. are running at over 50,000, breaking records at practically every turn.
More testing tends to lead to more cases found. But in an alarming indicator, the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus is on the rise across nearly the entire country, hitting almost 27% in Arizona, 19% in Florida and 17% in South Carolina.
While the U.S. has conducted more tests than any other nation, it ranks in the middle of the pack in testing per capita, behind Russia,
Spain and Australia, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“I am stunned that as a nation, six months into this pandemic, we still can’t figure out how to deliver testing to the American people when they need it,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute. “It is an abject failure of leadership and shows that the federal government has not prioritized testing in a way that will allow us to get through this pandemic.”
Testing alone without adequate contact tracing and quarantine measures won’t control the spread of the scourge, according to health experts. But they say delays in testing can lead to more infections by leaving people in the dark as to whether they need to isolate themselves.
In Oklahoma, a county health directors said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa that drew thousands of people in late June, along with large protests that accompanied it, “likely contributed“to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases.
Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases Tuesday.
Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said those large gatherings “more than likely” contributed to the coronavirus spike.
“In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots,“Dart said.
President Trump’s Tulsa rally, his first since the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S., attracted thousands of people from around the country. About 6,200 people gathered inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center arena — far fewer than was expected.
Dart had urged the campaign to consider pushing back the date of the rally, fearing a potential surge in the number of coronavirus cases.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said the campaign went to great lengths to ensure that those who attended the rally were protected.
“There were literally no health precautions to speak of as thousands looted, rioted, and protested in the streets and the media reported that it did not lead to a rise in coronavirus cases,” Murtaugh said in a statement. “Meanwhile, the President’s rally was 18 days ago, all attendees had their temperature checked, everyone was provided a mask, and there was plenty of hand sanitizer available for all.”
Although masks were provided to rally goers, there was no requirement that participants wear them, and most didn’t.
Officials in Houston canceled another large political gathering, saying the spread of the coronavirus made it impossible to hold he Texas Republican Party’s in-person convention.
Mayor Sylvester Turner said that the city’s lawyers exercised provisions in the contract that the Texas GOP signed to rent the downtown convention center for a three-day event to have started July 16, with committee meetings earlier in the week.
“The public health concerns outweighed anything else,” he said Wednesday.
Turner, a Democrat, previously resisted calls to cancel the convention.