California has thousands of coronavirus tests, but it can’t use them all. Here’s why
California has more than 8,000 coronavirus tests, but county public health labs can’t use all of them because many test kits lack necessary chemical components, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday.
That discrepancy has forced some county public health labs, including Sacramento’s, to rely on private labs to work down a backlog of tests.
Newsom at press conferences this week twice likened the coronavirus test kits the state received from the federal government to “printers without ink,” meaning the kits can’t work as designed without essential materials.
Some of the kits the state received from the federal government lack chemical reagents, which are needed to actually run tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 disease, Newsom said.
It’s “imperative” that the federal government send more necessary chemical reagents, he said during a news conference at the Capitol.
“I am surprised this is not more of the national conversation,” Newsom said. “We need to focus in on these tests.”
Sacramento’s public health department is one of 18 public health labs currently testing for the virus. In total, the state’s public health labs have run more than 1,500 tests, Newsom said Thursday morning.
Nearly 200 people have tested positive for the virus in the state.
More than 1,300 people have tested positive for the virus in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The actual number of infected people is likely much higher because testing is being limited by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Sacramento, the coronavirus test shortage is constraining officials to conducting about 20 tests per day — that’s about 25-30 people whose samples can be tested daily, said Peter Beilenson, the county’s public health officer.
Sacramento County health officials have said more testing options would improve officials’ ability to quickly assess the extent of a possible outbreak at an Elk Grove nursing home where one person has died of COVID-19.
That facility has about 140 residents, not including staff. As of Wednesday night, no one else has tested positive, but people there are still being tested.
Some counties, strapped for testing resources, have turned to public health labs in other parts of the state for help.
Butte County asked to have one of its samples run at Shasta County’s public health lab, which has one test kit. Shasta’s public health lab has also been running tests for other Northern California agencies, said Shasta County spokesman Tim Mapes.
The lab in Shasta County has tested on average five patients a day with its kit, Mapes said, adding that the lab would be strained if it has to start testing people more quickly.
“There’s no way to know how many (tests) we’re going to have to run, so we’ve been running serious cases first,” he said.
Other public health labs also fear what may happen if they run out of additional supplies for testing, given the high demand and limited supply of testing materials. Monterey County’s public health lab began testing last week, but may have to stop if it runs out of necessary reagent chemicals and equipment like collection swabs, said Rawni Lunsford, a senior microbiologist at the lab.
As public labs have become overburdened, hospitals and private labs have been stepping up. Four California hospitals are testing for the virus, and 3 others are working to begin testing next week, including UC Davis.
Commercial testing company Quest is also conducting tests in the state, although not all of those are on California patients. The company’s lab in San Juan Capistrano has processed 1,200 tests per day for the past two days, Newsom said, with plans to expand testing to two additional Quest labs in Sacramento and West Hills later this month.
Once those labs are up and running, Quest will be able to process more than 5,000 tests per day in California, Newsom said.
Quest is helping the state labs run tests that have been backlogged because of the reagent shortage.
Newsom said the commercial labs are able to process tests much more quickly and efficiently than state labs because they already process medical tests on a large scale.
“This is all they do, 24/7,” Newsom said.
State labs do not have the same capacity, although Newsom said it’s not because they are underfunded.
“From a cash-based perspective this state is in a good position to meet this moment,” Newsom said.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 2:00 PM with the headline "California has thousands of coronavirus tests, but it can’t use them all. Here’s why."