COVID-19 surge overwhelms labs causing slowdown in return of test results

More On: Coronavirus

Sick Americans are facing long waits for coronavirus test results with labs overwhelmed by the massive surge in infections across the country, medical testing executives say. Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, two of the nation’s biggest clinical lab operators, say they can’t add testing capacity fast enough to keep up with the breakneck pace at which …

Sick Americans are facing long waits for coronavirus test results with labs overwhelmed by the massive surge in infections across the country, medical testing executives say.

Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, two of the nation’s biggest clinical lab operators, say they can’t add testing capacity fast enough to keep up with the breakneck pace at which COVID-19 is spreading.

The resulting backlog means some patients have to wait more than a week to learn whether they have the virus — delays that may not improve until the disease gets under control, according to the companies.

“We need all states to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to better control the virus,” LabCorp CEO Adam Schechter told CNBC on Tuesday. “If we can do that, then we’ll be able to have the tests that we need.”

Both LabCorp and Quest say they can turn around tests for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in about one or two days. But LabCorp is taking three to five days on average to return results to anyone outside of a hospital even though it can run 165,000 tests per day, Schechter told CNBC.

Quest’s average turnaround time for such patients is more than seven days, though it can vary from just a couple days to as long as two weeks, according to a Monday news release. The company says it has the capacity to perform 130,000 diagnostic tests a day.

“We would double our capacity tomorrow . . . but it’s not the labs that are the bottleneck,” Quest executive vice president James Davis told The Financial Times. “[It] is our ability to get physical machines and, more importantly, our ability to feed those machines with chemical reagents.”

Both firms reportedly fear the backlogs could worsen in the fall, when demand for testing could increase further as kids return to school and the seasonal flu rears its sniffly head.

Quest won’t be able to double its relevant testing capacity in the next three months ahead of flu season, Davis told the Financial Times. He added that “other solutions need to be found” aside from the nasal swab tests like those used to detect both the coronavirus and the flu.

“I believe we have to be really thoughtful as we go into the fall. I am concerned about it. But we have to look at it holistically,” Schechter told CNBC. “… We have to do tests, and we have to have the turnaround time in two to three days to have effective ability to track and trace people that are sick, or have been exposed to people.”