Testing for COVID-19 has become a challenge across the country, and central New York hasn’t been spared. It’s currently taking up to 10 or 11 days to get test results because national labs have been inundated with tests.
Dr. Robert Corona, CEO of Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, is calling the testing shortage a perfect storm. He said it’s gotten to the point where some local nursing homes have lost contracts with big testing companies. And the long wait times for results makes testing less useful.
"If you can’t get a test result for 11 days, these people are waiting all that time, it’s hard to trace, track and quarantine people," said Corona.
Along with a massive amount of testing nationally, Corona said there also have been shortages in medical equipment and the reagents needed to get test results. Upstate does have its own quick test regimen for patients, but it has limited capacity. A new machine could turn that around.
"If we could get the two Roche machines that we’ve ordered, we’d be able to ramp up from around several hundred tests a day, which we do now, to around 5,000 a day," he said. "So we’d really be able to help the community if we could get these machines. But we can’t get them.”
Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said Monday the county is also being challenged by the testing shortage. He said they’ve shuffled the deck when it comes to labs they are using for testing.
"We are actively communicating with new labs that we haven’t been working with, bringing these labs into our community to work with our community partners to speed up those turn times," McMahon said.
At this point he said he's ready to make an investment in testing.
"We’re going to purchase rapid testing machines," he said. "That way we can ramp up the rapid testing infrastructure in the community."
The county hopes to make the purchase within two to three weeks, and once it goes online it could cut the wait time for results in half. SUNY Upstate is also waiting on federal approval for some new saliva tests that could get results back more quickly.
McMahon said it’s important to relieve the backlog with 15,000 college students coming back to town in the coming weeks. He also doesn’t want people to avoid getting tests, and said these delays interfere with the whole strategy to corral the coronavirus.
"It’s not an ideal situation we are in right now as a country," he said. "You need to get these results back quickly, contact trace. There’s always an element that someone's not being honest with you, or your missing something, so turn times are important."
