How NC can address the COVID-19 testing shortage
In controlling the spread of COVID-19, tests are the eyes of the response. Today the U.S. response is hampered by blurry vision — there aren’t enough test kits available to track where the virus is and how it is spreading.
Six weeks after announcing its first coronavirus case, South Korea had tested about 140,000 people. At the same point in the U.S. outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tested around 1,500 people, the Business Insider reported.
The test kit shortage may be the first and ultimately the largest flaw in how U.S. officials failed to prepare prepared and strongly react to a highly infectious illness that has become a pandemic. It also didn’t help that President Trump’s first response was to downplay the urgency of the threat.
As of Thursday, North Carolina has 17 confirmed cases of COVID-19, up from nine reported as of Wednesday, but a lack of access to testing makes the real number of infections impossible to calculate. On Wednesday, NC Health Director Elizabeth Tilson said the state lab has the capacity to test 250 people, though the private company LabCorp has additional tests.
Two Republican members of the North Carolina’s federal delegation, Sen. Thom Tillis and Rep. Richard Hudson, joined Democratic Rep. David Price in sending a letter on Wednesday to Vice President Mike Pence asking: Where are the test kits promised by the Centers For Disease Control?
Other countries have stepped up testing quickly and are processing thousands of people daily. The U.S. initially limited who could develop the test and who could get it. The lack of federal test kits spurred private labs and hospitals to develop their own, but the approval process required by the Food and Drug Administration delayed the tests’ availability.
Dr. Melissa Miller, director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at UNC Medical Center, said her lab developed a test based on the World Health Organization model, but couldn’t use it until it went through a federal approval process for expedited tests.
“I could have tested over 1,000 patients by now instead of checking boxes,” Miller said in a NBC News report. “The necessary validations for the emergency authorization are time- and cost-prohibitive. We are way behind.”
Miller’s frustration points the way toward a better response on testing. Many states, especially North Carolina, have private and public labs, hospitals and universities that can develop tests. The federal government is now encouraging them to do so, but it needs to clear up public confusion about where to get the test and how much it will cost.
Gov. Roy Cooper is trying to keep up with a rapidly evolving threat. One of his priorities should be marshaling state and local resources to make COVID-19 tests easily available at low or no cost for those who are insured and those who are not.
North Carolina is fortunate in this emergency to be a center for bio tech research, including expertise in responding to epidemics. The state should draw on that knowledge to coordinate through the state Department of Health and Human Services a unified and urgent response to COVID-19. The effort is doubly important in light of the federal government’s delayed and uneven response.
The state’s response will require a clear vision of what it is fighting. That means an all-out push to provide an abundance of test kits and assurances that all North Carolinians will have access to being tested without being denied because of cost or lack of insurance.
