Plenty of coronavirus tests are available, but they're not being used

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Wed, 2020-08-26 19:51 — mike kraft

Plenty of coronavirus tests are available, but they're not being used While commercial labs across the country have pushed hard this year to scale up their coronavirus testing capacity, the number of tests they conduct each week has fallen over the last month. Curt Devine and Drew Griffin, CNN CNN

CNN)While commercial labs across the country have pushed hard this year to scale up their coronavirus testing capacity, the number of tests they conduct each week has fallen over the last month.

Some of those major labs now report unused capacity, and one of the largest diagnostic companies has recently only been using about half of its total testing capabilities.

Though the dip in testing overlaps with an overall decrease in the rate of new coronavirus cases, some public health experts continue to say the US should do more testing to effectively trace the virus' spread.

Quest Diagnostics' figures show the company performed an average of about 86,000 tests per day over the last week, though its labs now have capacity to conduct about 165,000 tests per day....

The decline among commercial labs' testing in part reflects downward trends in national coronavirus testing. The average of new tests was about 706,000 for each day in August, whereas the daily average was about 744,000 in July, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project. ...

Some public health experts describe the trend as alarming.

"You've got a clear need for more testing and yet a dramatic decrease," said Dr. Jonathan Quick, who directs the pandemic response for the Rockefeller Foundation, which has said the US should expand capacity to be able to perform 30 million tests per week by October.

Quick said that a decrease could in part be driven by some people deciding not to get tested due to long wait times for results in preceding weeks, among other factors, but he added, "I see the pattern and some of it from a public health point of view just doesn't make any sense." ...

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