Chaos at hospitals due to shortage of coronavirus testing
A researcher works in a lab that is developing a test for the coronavirus last week in Nutley, N.J. As COVID-19 cases spike, the testing needed to help stem the spread of the disease remains below what is needed to address the growing crisis, with healthcare workers across the state reporting widespread failings in the response by local and federal government officials. “Last night I had a patient with clear coronavirus symptoms, but the health department didn’t think he should be tested,” said an emergency room doctor in Downey who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We don’t have capacity to test hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people every day” at the county-run lab alone, said L.A. County Public Health Department Director Barbara Ferrer. “The limitation of our lab was not the lab kits, but we’re only one lab and we could only process a certain number of tests in one day.” On Friday morning, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that the agency had provided all tests to the state of California “that they’ve asked for.” A spokeswoman from the California Health and Human Services Agency appeared to agree with Azar, saying in an email to The Times that California “has continually requested more testing capacity from the federal government, and the CDC has continued to fulfill those requests on an ongoing basis.” “As this need expands, we continue to ask for more tests — including just today,” she added. “Myself and my colleagues have been working in the trenches in the ER, and we can’t get people tested,” said another doctor who works at a hospital in Downey.
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