Why the U.S. is still 'severely constrained' in ability to test for COVID-19

Despite recent progress, many experts say COVID-19

test

ing remains too slow and low in the U.S. More than one million

test

s have been performed in the U.S. so far, and today, according to reports, President Trump told governors he hadn't heard of any problems with testing (I quote) "for weeks." But many people with symptoms and concerns say something different. Here's a sample of what viewers like you told us about their experiences. KRISTINA KATAYAMA, Seattle, Washington: My name is Kristina Katayama. And I live in Seattle, Washington. AARON WARNER, South Burlington, Vermont: My name is Aaron Warner. I live in south Burlington, Vermont.

ALYSON HINKIE, Magnolia, Texas: My name is Alyson Hinkie. I'm from Magnolia, Texas. SUNNY LEE, Seattle, Washington: He had difficulty breathing and coughed. My fever went up to about 101.5. AARON WARNER: I started to feel a lot of pressure in my chest. It reminded me of being in the gym carrying a heavy ball around the gym, except it was all the time. KRISTINA KATAYAMA: I had intense fatigue, very, very deep fatigue, that went down to my bones and went down to my hair follicles. ALYSON HINKIE: I left a message for the doctor's nurse. And they called me and asked me some questions.

And they said I didn't qualify for the test because I was under 65 and my fever wasn't high enough. DARRYLHI LOCKLEAR, Winter Haven, Florida: They took something long that almost looks like a Q-tip. They told me to look up and they put the swab up my nose. It was actually very painful. It burned quite a bit. SUNNY LEE: I actually wasn't able to get tested until three weeks after my symptoms appeared. So once I got tested, it took me five days to get the results. And, you know, clearly, I was negative. MARCUS RENDON, New Braunfels, Texas: I went to get tested at the military hospital in San Antonio.

They had it turned off in a parking lot. And they were performing... they were using nasal swabs. But, before that, when he was really sick and we were really worried, I guess because it was so early in the beginning, we didn't get any traction with anyone. KRISTINA KATAYAMA: I have, you know, a positive COVID test confirmed by my colleague that I worked with. They told me I couldn't do the testing because I didn't have the proper insurance. And then I was able to contact one of the clinics. They told me the same thing again: sorry, you don't have the right insurance.

Go home. So, needless to say, I didn't get tested. I worked really hard to get tested. And my mom is sick now. CHRIS BYRNE, Whidbey Island, Washington: I couldn't get tested. The person on the phone, who was quite nice, said, "I'm not saying you don't have this. It's just that we don't have enough tests. We have a service area of ​​87,000 people and we can do 50 tests a day." AARON WARNER: And there was a lot of panic out there, just... and a lot of lack of information about what this is like. And not being able to get tested really scared me a lot.

KRISTINA KATAYAMA: I didn't think it would be so difficult to take the tests. You may not have any symptoms and

still

be a carrier and pass it on to other people who are very vulnerable and will get sick and could die. So when you know, that information has an impact. And when you don't know, that lack of information has an impact. MARCUS RENDON: I don't think I would get tested now if it hadn't been for the military installation being set up, because being a veteran and retired, I can just show my ID. and get to work.

ALYSON HINKIE: The way it's been communicated here, both in the local news and in doctors' offices, is basically that if you're my age and you have symptoms, as long as you can breathe, you're being selfish for getting a test, because it basically gives you you are taking away a test from someone who really needs it. SUNNY LEE: We have family in Korea. We heard from them how aggressive Korea had been. The country itself fully financially sponsored the testing, the drive-thru testing facilities, being super, incredibly aggressive. When I think about myself and those seven days before I became symptomatic, I was on four plane trips.

And I think I counted over 500 people that I was exposed to. JUDY WOODRUFF: And there was some big news on this front. Abbott Laboratories just won federal approval in recent days for a rapid-response test that can return results quickly, in five to 13 minutes. Over time, it hopes to scale up so that medical clinics can perform 50,000 of those tests a day. But we are not there yet. Let's look at this topic now with Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo. She is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She is an epidemiologist. She's coming with me now from Baltimore, Maryland.

Jennifer Nuzzo, we are getting a mixed picture. President Trump just moments ago told the country that a million tests have been done, 100,000 a day, another rosy talk from his administration, but then you hear ordinary Americans like these describing the difficulties they had getting tested. and get results. Where is the truth? DR. JENNIFER NUZZO, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Yeah, I mean, it's

still

very limited. And our response to this pandemic has been a huge obstacle because we can't differentiate who has this virus and who doesn't. JUDY WOODRUFF: Why is it so important now to get lots of testing?

DR. JENNIFER NUZZO: Well, right now, what we need to do is figure out how to test intelligently. We need to come up with a strategy for testing, as our testing is still very limited. Right now, the obstacles are not so much the initial things we've heard about before, but the difficulty in getting tests out of labs. New online tests are being launched, but there are still obstacles in the initial phases. So a major obstacle is that doctors and nurses are very busy and possibly too busy to administer tests to people who are not sick enough to require hospitalization.

They also do not have personal protective equipment in sufficient quantities to be able to carry out the tests safely. And now there are also shortages of the chemicals and tools they use to collect the samples they would need to perform the tests. So right now, the kind of general message from telehealth is that we don't have the resources to test widely. That is the reality we have now. But if we ever want to overcome this, we will have to test more widely. And in particular, there are certain categories of people who may not be seriously ill, but who need to be tested.

The key is the doctors and nurses, who are potentially exposed to patients in the course of their work. JUDY WOODRUFF: Right. DR. JENNIFER NUZZO: And we need to know if they are infected or not. JUDY WOODRUFF: So I was going... you said strategy, meaning there has to be priority, health care workers, number one. Who after that? I mean, people starting to feel bad, or what? And also the fact that sometimes it is difficult to find a place, to get to the place where you need the test. I mean... DR. JENNIFER NUZZO: Yes, absolutely. So... true, absolutely.

There are other categories of people that I think are important. In particular, I am very concerned about long-term care facilities, because an outbreak at one of these facilities could easily overwhelm a local health system. There are sometimes thousands of very vulnerable elderly residents living in these facilities, and an outbreak at one of them can simply tip the balance of what is required of a health system. Therefore, more frequent testing at those facilities would likely be important. And then, also, people who live at home with medically fragile people, they should be able to get tested if they are symptomatic, so they know how best to protect their family members.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, President Trump again, just moments ago, was touting the amount of testing. He showed off this new rapid test that we just described from Abbott Labs. But how long will it take for that test and any other tests that make a difference to be deployed and actually available in communities across the country, where it's usable? DR. JENNIFER NUZZO: Right. That's why it's very encouraging that several companies are stepping up to develop faster tests. We absolutely need it. And the fact that the Abbott test can be done outside of a traditional lab and closer to where patients are, and be able to provide results in a relatively short period of time, minutes, unlike what we hear now, some people , It takes 10 days or more before you get your test results.

So that's clearly not viable. And I think it's important to have new tools, like the Abbott test. That said, we still have some obstacles we need to address, such as the fact that doctors, nurses, or whoever is going to perform the tests need personal protective equipment to be able to do so safely. We still need to be able to have the swabs to take a sample for these tests. Therefore, we need to work on all of these issues and not just focus on one particular test or device. We need a global strategy. And then a bigger problem is that states are taking very different approaches in terms of who they test and how much testing they do.

And we don't have visibility into it, which makes it very difficult from a national perspective to understand how much COVID-19 there is in the country and whether the situation is getting better or worse. JUDY WOODRUFF: A different approach state by state. And, very quickly, this is a broad topic, but a lot of people want to know why the United States is not in a better position. I know it's a complicated question, but some point to the federal government. DR. JENNIFER NUZZO: Well, I think there were some unforeseen glitches that weren't anticipated. That said, as soon as some technical issues arose, I really think there was a lack of urgency to expand testing.

And, frankly, I don't understand why that was the case. But it cannot be argued that we lost a lot of ground and time that we could have used to control the cases, to the point that we have now surpassed China. JUDY WOODRUFF: There's a lot to try to understand. Jennifer Nuzzo, thank you very much for joining us.