‘I don’t know if we’re there yet’: Testing capacity remains concern as Mass. starts reopening
“In lieu of having a vaccine, we’re going to really have to scale up testing.”
As Massachusetts begins the first of four phases for reopening the state economy, some are expressing concerns that the volume of tests for coronavirus — and testing capacities for individual sites — are still falling short.
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Gov. Charlie Baker and state public health officials have emphasized that ramping up testing and tracing of COVID-19 cases will be key in reopening Massachusetts. State officials are working toward increasing capacity to 45,000 tests per day by the end of July and 75,000 daily tests by the end of December.
With daily test numbers ranging between 11,000 to 13,000 in recent days, there’s a long way to go, state Rep. Jon Santiago said this week.
“I’m curious to see how we’re going to get there,” he said in a video on his Twitter page. “Forty-five thousand is three or four times that number. And in lieu of testing and contact tracing, it’s going to be really hard to reopen the economy at the rate that so many of us want to.”
Santiago, who also works as an emergency room doctor at Boston Medical Center, expressed concerns that Massachusetts — while seeing progress in the virus outbreak — isn’t seeing the kind of decrease in the percentage of tests coming back positive to reopen safely.
“My concern is that we may have a second surge if we reopen up too quickly,” he said. “And even in countries that have done a good job at controlling the epidemic — Germany, South Korea — they’ve seen outbreaks and second surges. And that’s what we want to try and avoid here. So we have to make sure that we set appropriate benchmarks and follow those. And I don’t know if we’re there yet.
“We still have over 10 percent of tests that come back positive,” he noted. “I would say that number needs to be significantly below 10 percent if we want to do that. And in lieu of having a vaccine, we’re going to really have to scale up testing.”
Another wknd of overnight shifts…and the ER was WICKED busy! Overall, #coronavirus #covid19 numbers are down, but before we open up our economy, we must double down on testing & contact tracing in order to avoid a second surge. The public health must come first! pic.twitter.com/tqM8M7qjx7
— Jon Santiago (@IamJonSantiago) May 18, 2020
Baker announced Monday that the state’s roadmap for reopening includes six public health metrics that will be monitored and used to determine whether Massachusetts can progress forward through each of the four phases. Two of the six metrics, testing capacity and the positive test rate, are considered to be in a positive trend as of this week, according to the state.
Currently, the state is only using about one-third of its testing capacity, officials said Monday.
Since the mobilization of the state’s reopening, at least one hospital has raised concerns that they do not have the enough coronavirus tests for infection control as the restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the virus ease.
Spiros Hatiras, president of Holyoke Medical Center, told Boston 25 on Wednesday that his facility was down to six rapid test kits and would likely be out by Thursday. Testing is still not widely available, he said.
“The supply is limited and it is being diverted to big labs [like] Quest and big hospitals,” Hatiras told the station. “You never know if we’re going to get zero or 50 test kits. So re-opening without widespread testing is going to be problematic.”
Baker has said the state is not working towards universal testing of Massachusetts residents, which some public health experts have said is critical in resuming normal activities in the absence of a coronavirus vaccine. Ahead of the release of Baker’s reopening plan, those experts said the state was still well behind the testing goal of at least 900,000 coronavirus tests daily by May 15 that would allow for a safe reopening.
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