Demand for COVID tests pushed labs to their limit. Will they be ready for fall?

This summer, skyrocketing cases of COVID-19 nationwide pushed testing labs into overdrive, and people in many states had to wait days — in some cases even weeks — to receive results.

Speedy testing is key because the longer it takes to receive a test result, the longer someone may unknowingly spread the virus. A study published in The Lancet found testing and contact tracing without delay could reduce up to 80% of ongoing transmissions, but a three-day delay in test results cuts that success rate by at least half.

In the last week of July, just 56% of tests were completed within three days, according to government data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. For all of July, only 45% of tests were completed in that timeframe. On July 27, Quest Diagnostics, one of the largest commercial labs in the country, reported one-week turnaround times for anybody who wasn't a hospital patient or health care worker with symptoms, although these have improved in the last two weeks as the number of new cases subsided in many states. On August 10, Quest said it was now averaging a two- to three-day turnaround.

The reason for the delays is that labs across the country have dealt with shortages in virtually all the vital supplies they depend on: trained staff, high-volume machines to run tests, the pipette tips that hold the samples, and the chemicals needed to trigger a reaction for the tests to even work.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/demand-for-covid-tests-pushed-labs-to-their-limit-will-they-be-ready-for-fall/ar-BB17S5fw?li=BBnb7Kz