Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, April one. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily
Speaker 1: coronavirus update. As COVID nineteen testing capabilities ramp up and
Speaker 1: companies are coming up with new tests, why does it
Speaker 1: still take so long to get results? First, it is
Speaker 1: a multi step process. Once a sample is taken, it
Speaker 1: needs to travel to a lab, then it needs to
Speaker 1: be processed, and different circumstances and processing will lead to
Speaker 1: different turnaround times. Julie Appleby, senior correspondent at Kaiser Health News,
Speaker 1: joins us for the steps involved in testing and new
Speaker 1: ones on the way. Thanks for joining us, Julie, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. A lot has been made about testing
Speaker 1: throughout this whole coronavirus pandemic right now, as everybody is
Speaker 1: clamoring to get tested, we're seeing serious backlogs on this.
Speaker 1: Still it still takes a long time, despite a bunch
Speaker 1: of new tests coming out. Besides new companies working on
Speaker 1: tests saying that you know, we can get results in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as little as minutes to a few hours,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of apps that are involved in
Speaker 1: all of this, and that's why things are taking so long.
Speaker 1: So Julie tell us a little bit about this. Take
Speaker 1: us behind the scenes that what this testing looks like, right,
Speaker 1: and it does take a long time. As we've seen,
Speaker 1: people are being told, you know, you have to wait
Speaker 1: five or six or seven days in some cases to
Speaker 1: get a test. So why is that? So let's back
Speaker 1: up a little bit. We had some problems initially when
Speaker 1: the first CDC test came out. Those were resolved. More
Speaker 1: and more labs now have approval to run these tests,
Speaker 1: and larger labs and the hospital labs, ETCeteras are and
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, we're starting to see some quicker tests,
Speaker 1: but it still takes some time. There's a number of
Speaker 1: steps in the process. Like first you get your nose
Speaker 1: swabs right with one of these things, and they put
Speaker 1: that swab in a little tube and they send it
Speaker 1: off to the lab and the lab then has to
Speaker 1: do some pretty sophisticated analysis of this sample, right to
Speaker 1: figure out do you have COVID or not and that
Speaker 1: and real quick. That's the first step, actually getting swabbed
Speaker 1: and then sending it to a lab. That could take
Speaker 1: up to a day depending on where the lab is,
Speaker 1: how far it is from where you got test. That's correct.
Speaker 1: You've got to think about transit time. There's about a
Speaker 1: day lag there. Now, there are some places that are
Speaker 1: doing testing on site, So if you're at a large
Speaker 1: academic medical center, chances are they might have their own
Speaker 1: testing capability at depth center, but they're probably limiting the
Speaker 1: testing too in patients and to their hospital staff. So
Speaker 1: the reason they can get a result back a little
Speaker 1: quicker there is because they just do it in house,
Speaker 1: so they don't have that transit time. But even when
Speaker 1: they do it in house, there's a bunch of steps
Speaker 1: that have to be done. They have to put them
Speaker 1: in a machine. Generally, there's there's some manual work that
Speaker 1: the technician does. They have to extract some RNA and
Speaker 1: amplify the DNA, and there's all this science kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Some of it's done manually, but a lot of places,
Speaker 1: these big commercial labs have these machines that run them automatically,
Speaker 1: so they're faster. They can process more samples at a
Speaker 1: time in a piece i road. I talked to pathology
Speaker 1: lab at mid Star Medical Center in Georgetown here in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And they can run nine three samples at
Speaker 1: a time in their machine. And they can run about
Speaker 1: three of those icles a day. Okay, so that's why
Speaker 1: they do it in the house at this hospital, but
Speaker 1: they're kind of limited in the number they can do.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you go to a test site and they
Speaker 1: might send it off to a large commercial lab that's
Speaker 1: that can process twenty or thirty thousand of these a day,
Speaker 1: so that might be faster, but then you've got to
Speaker 1: transit time and they've got a big backlog. So these
Speaker 1: are all the reasons why it can take a number
Speaker 1: of days to get results back in some cases, and
Speaker 1: in other cases you might get an answer back sooner.
Speaker 1: And one of the other difficulties is that there's so
Speaker 1: many people that want to get tested. They want to
Speaker 1: have peace of mind to know whether they do not
Speaker 1: have it, or they want confirmation if they're getting they
Speaker 1: have some type of symptoms. They want to know they
Speaker 1: have it so they can know what to do. And
Speaker 1: in a lot of these places, it's like almost a
Speaker 1: sign like no Watkins welcome kind of thing, because you know,
Speaker 1: some of these sites have to you have to follow
Speaker 1: a line. Basically, you know, somebody coming off the street
Speaker 1: just can't get their tests and get it done. They
Speaker 1: need to prioritize these things to healthcare workers, to people
Speaker 1: that really have bad symptoms and are in hot need hospitalization.
Speaker 1: And that's true. That's because we don't have enough test
Speaker 1: in the United States right now. They're working on ramping
Speaker 1: that up. As you mentioned, We've we've got some new
Speaker 1: test kits out there starting to go out that that
Speaker 1: can get results back quicker, and those are expected to
Speaker 1: be sort of point of care. When you walk in
Speaker 1: your doctor's office or the emergency room, you might be
Speaker 1: able to get a result back in five to thirteen minutes.
Speaker 1: But that just got a proof, you know, Friday night,
Speaker 1: and they're they're going to start shipping them. They're hoping
Speaker 1: to ship fifty thousand of them a day. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people like you mentioned that just want
Speaker 1: that peace of mind or you know, if you've got it,
Speaker 1: you really need to isolate yourself. And so it's good
Speaker 1: to know do you have it or not, But we're
Speaker 1: not there yet. Yeah, the test that you were just
Speaker 1: talking about that we can get the one that just
Speaker 1: kind of got to prove this past Friday, the President
Speaker 1: was talking about that one. Um, you know, just trying
Speaker 1: to get people hope really that you know, you can
Speaker 1: get tested and get a result very quickly, but even
Speaker 1: that still needs to get ramped up. Those little test
Speaker 1: kits need to be made and sent out, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that goes into it, and and
Speaker 1: we're hearing a lot about shortages specifically with healthcare workers
Speaker 1: with personal protective equipment, masks, all that stuff, But these
Speaker 1: testing kits also suffer from some of those shortages. The
Speaker 1: chemical agency using those kits, these swabs to get the samples.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that are in short supply
Speaker 1: right now, and all of that needs to get ramped up.
Speaker 1: That's correct, and that's why some of these groups, the
Speaker 1: big lab testing groups and some of those are saying,
Speaker 1: let's limit the testing right now and to these high
Speaker 1: priority people because there are these shortage and asks kind
Speaker 1: of backing up manufacturing in some cases. I spoke with
Speaker 1: a manufacturer who was, you know, working on making sure
Speaker 1: he could get all the right little chemicals to put
Speaker 1: in it and and the swabs and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And he has multiple suppliers, but he's on the phone
Speaker 1: working this thing to make sure that happens. And there's
Speaker 1: just a big demand for these products right now, you
Speaker 1: keep hearing it a lot. We're all in this together.
Speaker 1: We have to practice the social distancing. There's a bit
Speaker 1: of patients that goes into this that unfortunately a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't have because you know, you hear scary
Speaker 1: words like pandemic and whatnot, and people are legitimately concerned.
Speaker 1: So but it is kind of this patients that we
Speaker 1: have to practice with all of this as well, right,
Speaker 1: And more and more of these are getting approved. I mean,
Speaker 1: just in a couple of days since I wrote my story,
Speaker 1: there's been a couple more tests approved under these emergency
Speaker 1: use authorizations by the FDA, So more tests are coming
Speaker 1: on the market. There's another entire kind of test which
Speaker 1: tries to figure out if you have immunity if you
Speaker 1: already had the disease, and those are gonna We're gonna
Speaker 1: start hearing more about those. They're not available widely here
Speaker 1: in the United States yet, but other countries are working
Speaker 1: on that, getting folks tested to figure out, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: it's safe you go back to work. You've had the disease,
Speaker 1: you presumably have immunity now. Julie Appleby, senior correspondent at
Speaker 1: Kaiser Health News, thank you very much for joining us,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has
Speaker 1: been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For today's
Speaker 1: big news stories, you can check me out on the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us
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