The Sacramento Bee
By Tony Bizjak
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In a major setback, Sacramento County health officials said Monday they will shut five coronavirus testing sites this week in under-served communities due to a growing shortage of testing materials.
County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson said the last of the five centers, one in Natomas, will be open on Tuesday, then all five will shut down indefinitely.
It’s a big hit,” Beilenson said. “UC Davis, which does the tests for us, doesn’t have the materials. There’s a shortage nationally.”
The five centers, which opened a month ago, are in lower-income neighborhoods, including some were the virus appears to have begun to spread:
- Natomas Unified School District
- South Sacramento Christian Center
- Tetteh Pediatric Health in South Land Park
- La Familia Counseling Center
- Robertson Community Center
Beilenson said the county was informed by its testing partner, the UC Davis Medical Center, on Monday that officials there have been unable to get some of the components needed to conduct the testing. The county has been sending the samples from the five sites to UC for testing.
UC Davis Medical Center stepped in to help a month ago when Sacramento was suffering from a shortage of federally supplied test materials.
The partnership enabled Sacramento to dramatically increase testing, notably among people who did not previously have access to services. Those recent tests helped determine the extend of the virus infections in the area’s Latino community, and helped highlight the trend toward younger people getting the virus.
Beilenson said, based on talks with UC Davis on Monday, that he hoped the county will be able to reopen the test sites in about two weeks, but it will depend on the medical center’s ability to replenish its testing resources.
National news media have begun to report testing material shortages elsewhere as more communities have attempted to expand the number of tests available.
Speaking Monday to the New York Times about similar shortages around the country, Dr. Morgan Katz, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins Hospital, called the turn of events “terrifying, and clearly an evidence of a failure of the system.”
In California, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly on Saturday warned about pending shortages and urged laboratories “to prioritize testing turnaround for individuals who are most at risk of spreading the virus to others.”
State officials dramatically ramped up testing in recent weeks, before running into shortages.
As more states begin to scale their testing capabilities, new constrains are materializing within the supply chain,” Ghaly reported Saturday. “Simultaneously, laboratories are becoming overwhelmed with high numbers of specimens, slowing down processing timelines.
“These delays will present significant challenges in (1) our ability to care for people in the hospital where testing helps us make appropriate treatment decisions and (2) our ability to appropriately isolate those who are sick in order to box in the virus and cut transmission rates.
“California will continue to work hard to reduce any delays in testing turnaround time and return to our broader scale testing efforts,” he said.
In Sacramento, a testing center at St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church in Oak Park remains open. The Verily free testing site at Cal Expo also remains open to all comers, including those who do not have symptoms.
Those sites may face testing limitations, as well.
Residents are still able to obtain tests through their own health care providers, but those providers also may run into testing material shortages.
(c)2020 The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.)