COVID-19 cases are still increasing around the Mountain West, and wait times to get test results are getting longer for many.
In Montana, there鈥檚 been recorded wait times of up to . In Arizona, some have been .
Carl Bergstrom is a biology professor at the University of Washington, and he says that kind of delay severely hampers our ability to control the virus.
鈥淵ou need to be able to get the results back within the infectious period, which is a medium length of about seven days 鈥� and, ideally, much faster than that,鈥� he said.
That鈥檚 important for a number of reasons, Bergstrom said, ranging from people being able to get treatment for COVID-19, to tracking the outbreak, to stopping the virus鈥� spread from asymptomatic individuals.
Most states in the region are taking less than a week to produce results, but they鈥檙e having trouble keeping testing times down to one or two days because they鈥檙e being strained by private partners. Those partners are working with national testing companies that are seeing increasing demands for tests, supply chain challenges and subsequent backlogs.
鈥淏ecause of this, the state lab has experienced an uptick in samples, resulting in a longer turnaround time,鈥� the Colorado State Information Center said in an email. 鈥淩ight now, our turnaround time is about four days.鈥�
That information center says Colorado is adding more state testing capacity to help, but it can鈥檛 control the national influx hampering its private partners.
Idahoans鈥� wait times actually dropped from 4.5 days to 1.4 days on the four days leading to July 18th, but nearly half of test results coming from out-of-state labs are still taking more than three days to reach patients. That鈥檚 similar to what Wyoming is seeing, where state officials say in-state tests are taking one or two days, but tests through private labs have taken as long as seven days to return results.
And in Utah, its average wait time for a test has held steady at around three days, but Utah Department of Health spokesperson Tom Hudachko says that still isn鈥檛 fast enough.
鈥淭he quicker that we can identify a positive case, the quicker that public health can reach out to that individual, and get them isolated and get people who they might have been close contacts with quarantined,鈥� he said.
Bergstrom says there are ways to get more people tested and get tests faster, adding 鈥渋t doesn鈥檛 require science fiction to do this. We鈥檝e got the techniques, we know how to do it. We鈥檝e just got to solve the infrastructure problems and make it happen.鈥�
He specifically pointed to a new tactic called 鈥減ool testing鈥� where a group of people is tested together, which reduces the number of tests needed and can rule out large groups in a short amount of time.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration that new tactic on July 18 for major testing company Quest Diagnostics on an emergency basis.
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