Los Angeles offering free virus tests to all

Mayor doesn’t want to waste unused kits

LOS ANGELES — With ample coronavirus tests and not enough sick people seeking them, the mayor of Los Angeles recently did something on a scale no other major U.S. city had done — allow anyone with or without symptoms to be tested as often as they want.

A website to book a test was quickly swamped by residents in the nation’s second-largest city and the surrounding county who couldn’t get tested under more stringent guidelines and were concerned they were infected or could be asymptomatic carriers unwittingly exposing others.

But despite overbooking to compensate for a third of the people who didn’t show up, the city still has thousands of tests that aren’t being used each week, according to figures provided to The Associated Press by the mayor’s office.

“Wasted tests at a time when we still have insufficient testing is really unfortunate,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a San Diego-based medical research partnership. “I applaud what they’re doing. The more people tested the better.”

Mayor Eric Garcetti’s vow to not let a test go to waste was the result of a partnership with a startup company that developed an easy-to-administer test that doesn’t rely on scarce supplies. But it was a significant departure from stricter state criteria and guidelines set by the health department the city shares with the county to limit tests to those who need them most.

It comes at a time when expanded testing is a cornerstone of the state’s plan to ease its stay-at-home order and as Los Angeles County has become the epicenter of the virus outbreak and lags progress the rest of the state has shown.

When Garcetti opened testing April 30, the county at large had relaxed some guidelines on who could get a test, with priorities going to the sickest and most vulnerable. It allowed testing some people without symptoms, including health care workers and emergency personnel most at risk of exposure.

From a public health perspective, wider testing could help determine the disease prevalence, though that would require random sampling, not people seeking to be tested, said Karin Michels, an epidemiology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. And testing asymptomatic people comes at the expense of those who can’t get a test.

Los Angeles has paid $137 per test to Curative-Korva, a start-up run by Fred Turner, 25, a British wunderkind. The firm was making sepsis tests when a worker there thought he was infected with coronavirus, couldn’t get a test and devised one to collect a specimen by swabbing the inside of the mouth after coughing, spokesman Kyle Arteaga said.

The test got emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Los Angeles has 75,000 tests available each week to use mainly at eight drive-thru sites open six days a week, though it also tests at homeless shelters, nursing homes and recreation centers. It has conducted a weekly average of close to 57,000 tests in the two weeks since the expanded testing.

The Curative test, which is being used by the U.S. Air Force and sold to Alaska and Florida, is one of several newer tests gaining attention. A saliva test developed by Rutgers University was given emergency FDA approval May 8 for home use.

Richard Vogel The Associated Press A medical worker passes a self-administered coronavirus test on a pole at a drivethru site in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles.