Page 23 - HOH

A2 UP FRONT
Friday 13 March 2020
Virus testing is 'failing,' leaving cases uncounted

Continued from Front

As of Thursday afternoon,
the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
reported about 1,260 U.S.
illnesses — a number that
trailed independent re-
searchers, who are add-
ing reports from individual
states more quickly.
But some experts believe
any number based on test
results of individual patients
is a dramatic undercount.
Researchers at Cedars-Si-
nai Medical Center in Los
Angeles this week estimat-
ed that the true count of in-
fections was close to 9,000
— about two weeks ago.
"I expect there are more
infected individuals now,"
said one of the research-
ers, Dr. Jonathan Braun.
"This means that the level of
disease in the U.S. is much
greater than has been re-
ported by actual testing."
The problem, these experts
say: The U.S. simply isn't test-
ing enough people. A medical personnel holds a kit for the test for Coronavirus outside one of the emergency structures that were set up to ease
procedures outside the hospital of Brescia, Northern Italy, Tuesday, March 10, 2020.
There are no official num- Associated Press
bers from the federal gov-
ernment on the country's government, private and processing thousands of Alex Azar told reporters strategy" if cases started
overall testing capacity. academic labs. It reflects samples at a time. In con- earlier this week. appearing, she said.
One of the only compre- the total number of patient trast, the equipment used Azar said the government is But earlier this week, near-
hensive estimates comes results that could be proc- by most U.S. state and local working to set up a system ly a month after the an-
from Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the essed in a day, not the cur- labs requires technicians to combine government nouncement, doctors and
former FDA commissioner rent number being run. to manually process each testing figures with those of scientists were still await-
who is now a resident fel- Whatever the actual sample in small batches, outside laboratories. ing word on whether that
low at the American Enter- number, the U.S. effort is sometimes 100 or fewer per Government officials have surveillance system was up
prise Institute, a conserva- trailing other nations. day. pledged that large pri- and running.
tive think tank. South Korea, a country The testing process in the vate testing companies like On Thursday, the CDC re-
As of Thursday, his group one-sixth the size of the U.S. requires mixing various Quest Diagnostics will dras- vealed that some labs
estimated U.S. labs could U.S. in population, is report- chemicals to setup chain tically expand U.S. capac- had begun the testing.
process results for more edly testing 15,000 people reactions that extract ge- ity. A Quest spokeswom- But the list of test sites had
than 20,000 patients per per day. CDC Director Dr. netic information from pa- an on Wednesday said it changed, and the agency
day. The figure is based on Robert Redfield noted that tients' swabs. Each lab must could take up to six weeks did not explain why.
a combination of publicly officials there are using fine-tune the process on to ramp up to testing tens In its initial announcement,
reported information and automated, high-volume its own equipment, some- of thousands of samples the CDC said the work
historical estimates from testing systems capable of thing experts have likened per week. The company would begin in Chicago,
to perfecting a new recipe. expects to complete sev- Los Angeles, New York City,
Unlike countries with cen- eral thousand tests by the San Francisco and Seat-
tralized, government- end of this week. tle. On Thursday, it said it
based health care systems, On Feb. 14, the CDC's Dr. instead had begun in Chi-
the U.S. response is frag- Nancy Messonnier said cago and four sites in Cali-
mented between public the agency planned in the fornia — Los Angeles, San
labs and private efforts by coming weeks to use labs Diego, San Francisco and
hospitals, universities and in five cities to provide a Santa Clara.
diagnostic companies. good look at whether coro- Five other locations are
U.S. officials have boasted navirus might be appear- working to get surveil-
of shipping well over 1 mil- ing. The idea: When pa- lance testing going, a CDC
lion tests to labs across the tients test negative for flu, spokeswoman said. They
country. But it's unclear their specimens would go are New York City; Orange
how many have actually through coronavirus test- County and Solano in Cali-
been used on patients, ing to see if the new bug fornia; and the states of Ha-
because tests have gone caused their symptoms. waii and Washington.
to some private labs and "Results from this surveil- The agency did not imme-
hospitals that don't report lance would be an early diately detail what the so-
into the CDC, Health and warning signal, to trigger called sentinel testing sites
Human Services Secretary a change in our response have found.q