Coronavirus testing is critical to Idaho’s reopening plan. Do we have enough supplies?
Idaho’s coronavirus testing capacity is improving — and soon it could be a little easier to get a test.
About two weeks ago, Gov. Brad Little established a task force to specifically address testing issues. After weeks of nationwide backlogs and shortages of testing equipment, Idaho officials say testing is in significantly better shape due to an increase in supplies and a decrease in demand for tests. Now state health experts are looking to broaden the criteria for who can be tested for COVID-19 as local laboratories ramp up their test-processing capacity to several thousand per day.
Idaho began its four-stage plan to reopen the state May 1 following five weeks of a statewide coronavirus stay-home order. State officials have repeatedly emphasized how testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, will play a vital role in moving forward through each stage.
How many people can Idaho test for COVID-19?
In the last few weeks, Little and state health officials have said fast, accurate testing will allow Idaho to keep tabs on the criteria that must be met to move to each subsequent phase of the reopening plans. That criteria includes downward trends in new coronavirus cases and a robust testing program for health care workers.
However, there have been numerous challenges in testing across the country since the virus came to the U.S. Idaho has dealt with shortages of PCR — or polymerase chain reaction — testing supplies as well as backlogs at laboratories that process the tests. Sara Stover, senior policy adviser to Little, said some constituents contacted the governor’s office early on to report turnaround times on test results that were as lengthy as 10 to 12 days. Idaho Statesman readers reported delays even longer than that.
It’s still not clear what Idaho’s cumulative daily capacity is for COVID-19 testing, according to Christopher Ball, lab bureau chief at the Idaho Bureau of Laboratories. Ball is co-chairman of Little’s testing task force along with Dr. Jim Souza, chief medical officer for St. Luke’s Health System.
“We’re trying to get a sense of what the in-house (PCR testing) capacity for hospitals around the state is,” Ball told the Statesman in a phone interview.
Ball said the Idaho Bureau of Laboratories is able to process about 200 tests each day. Some Idaho hospitals initially had to outsource their tests to external laboratories as they struggled to procure supplies needed to process the tests. In recent weeks, some of those hospitals have been able to resume testing at their own facilities, though not always at full capacity.
“St. Luke’s has four systems that can process COVID-19 specimens but, until a few weeks ago, the health system could not purchase reagent, a substance with a short shelf life that is key to the testing,” a hospital news release stated in April.
St. Luke’s anticipated the hospital’s lab capacity would surpass 1,700 tests per day in May.
Saint Alphonsus spokesman Mark Snider said in an email that in-house lab testing has allowed the health system to return lab results on COVID-19 in as little as an hour.
“We have instrumentation that would allow us to do over 1,500 tests per day but the limiting factor is the availability of the test kits,” Snider said. “While the allocations are getting better, it still is an issue for in-house testing.”
Local businessman and doctor Tommy Ahlquist co-founded the Crush the Curve effort, which has administered thousands of COVID-19 tests. Ahlquist said in a phone interview that Crush the Curve has the capacity to process 4,000 COVID-19 tests per day at two out-of-state labs it’s contracting with — or 28,000 tests per week.
By Wednesday, Idaho had tested just over 30,000 people total, according to state data, and averaged 537 tests per day from April 5 through May 2.
The Boise Veterans Affairs hospital is also processing COVID-19 tests in-house, Stover said. Some Idaho hospitals are still sending tests to external labs, but Stover said turnaround times have improved.
“The last I heard, private lab reports (of wait times) are down considerably,” she said. “We were all trying to get the same testing reagents and the same swabs. … We’re in a much better place now.”
Who can be tested for COVID-19 in Idaho?
On April 22, Souza, the St. Luke’s chief medical officer, told Idaho Matters that the health system had scaled back its drive-up testing hours “because, frankly, the demand has continued to go down.” That’s a stark difference from when the drive-up testing sites first opened and were hit by bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Ball said Tuesday that he has heard demand for drive-up testing is still on the decline.
“However, now that we’re starting to reopen the state, we may see the demand start to increase,” Ball said. “At this point, we’re not seeing any evidence of that, but there’s always a lag.”
Since Idaho first began testing for COVID-19, it has followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s three-tier priority system to decide who should be tested amid the shortage of test kits. That meant health care workers, essential workers, hospitalized individuals and those with known COVID-19 symptoms were the only ones being tested. Last month, several Treasure Valley residents told the Statesman they had been turned away at testing sites despite displaying symptoms.
Last week, Ball said in a Facebook Live video on the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare page that Idaho still doesn’t have “the supplies necessary to … start testing people that aren’t symptomatic.”
According to Stover, the governor’s testing task force is working to target testing to at-risk groups and broaden the criteria that must be met in order to be tested.
Ahlquist said that will be critical.
“We’ve got to have a really, really low threshold to do the COVID-19 testing,” he said. “I think … they ought to have a threshold that’s almost on the ground to contain that. Everyone should be getting a test that thinks they have COVID-19.”
Does the state have adequate COVID-19 testing supplies?
Ball and Stover said Idaho is expecting an influx of supplies from the federal government.
“We have had some assurance from the … White House about them sending more testing swabs and reagents that start in the month of May and continue through June,” Stover said, adding the supplies are not part of the Strategic National Stockpile.
Ball said the supplies were made available through the Defense Production Act, which has ramped up production of collection equipment. He said he’s coordinated with multiple people at Health and Human Services, including representatives from FEMA and the CDC.
Ball said Idaho would receive enough testing collection supplies for about 2% of the state’s population, including 40,000 nasopharyngeal swabs and 30,000 vials of viral transport medium. Idaho health officials will determine how to allot the supplies throughout the state.
Health experts emphasized that the state of testing — capacity, turnaround times, demand and more — has been highly subject to change.
“It’s a very dynamic landscape for testing,” Ball said. “There’s a lot of new methods that are getting FDA emergency use authorization — kind of on a daily basis. That’s the one constant thing I’ve seen is the testing landscape is always changing.”
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
