August 6, 2020 - Huge Deficit in Testing
Huge Deficit in Testing
August 6, 2020
Alabama’s cases more than doubled today, rising from 952 to 1,938 (incl. a record 312 probables). Tests also increased by 135%, rising from 5,038 to 12,012. The net effect of these stunning increases is that our positivity rate actually declined slightly, despite the doubling of cases - 18.24% vs 18.37% yesterday. There were also 19 deaths, which is close to our daily average.
This perfectly illustrates the point I’ve been emphasizing in recent days. Cases, alone, tell only part of the story in our battle against COVID-19. The State of New York had 636 cases yesterday, more than two-thirds the number Alabama had. Yet, New York tested 72,668 people, compared to barely 5,000 people tested in Alabama. As a result, New York reported a 7-day average positivity rate of just 0.96%, a tiny fraction compared to Alabama.
It is outrageous that this pandemic is over 6 months old in the U.S. and yet Alabama, like so many other states, still cannot get testing right. Just last week, ADPH stated that commercial labs and our State lab were so overwhelmed that the average turnaround time had ballooned to 7 days. The difficulty in getting tested and receiving timely results is undoubtedly responsible for the meteoric rise we are now seeing in “probable” cases. “A test result that comes back in seven or eight days is worthless for everybody — it shouldn’t even be counted,” according to Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
The way to improve turnaround times is not to reduce the number of tests. Fewer tests do not lead to fewer cases, only fewer known cases. Nor is it helpful to ration tests by limiting them to persons with symptoms because asymptomatic people spread the virus just as broadly, if unknowingly, to others. The answer is to develop a testing infrastructure that will test more people more quickly, so that persons who test positive can be identified and contact tracing can take place. In the absence of a national testing strategy, each state must figure this out on its own.
On Tuesday, the governors of 6 states - La; Md; Mass; Mich; Ohio; and Va - undertook to do just that. Taking the unusual step of banding together, with the assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation, they are purchasing 3 million tests from two manufacturers with the goal of reducing the turnaround time from days to minutes.
Our State is trying to develop a better test program on its own. On Monday, UAB and ADPH announced the opening of 13 new testing locations across the State, adding to two campus locations in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. Using nasal swabs and a test pooling approach developed in-house by UAB, the UA System is confident it will be able to test all of the State’s returning college students and dramatically accelerate turnaround times without sacrificing accuracy. If this gamble pays off, ADPH expects to introduce the UAB program to the general public. Here are today’s totals:
7/24 - 1,793
7/25 - 2,125
7/26 - 1,164
7/27 - 1,821
7/28 - 1,251
7/29 - 1,416
7/30 - 1,980
7/31 - 1,961
8/1 - 1,646
8/2 - 2,095
8/3 - 1,217
8/4 - 1,041
8/5 - 952
8/6 - 1,938
Jefferson (300), Mobile (151) and Montgomery (99) led the way. Etowah (74), Escambia (63) and Bibb (29) counties all set individual records.