LOS ANGELES (AP) – For two weeks, Rachael Jones has stayed home, going without a paycheck while waiting and waiting for the results of a COVID-19 test from a pharmacy near Philadelphia.
“I’m just so disappointed. I just don’t know how – with the resources and the people we have and the money we have – we can’t get this right,” she said.
Four months, 3 million confirmed infections and over 130,000 deaths into the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., Americans confronted with a resurgence of the scourge are facing long lines at testing sites in the summer heat or are getting turned away. Others are going a week or more without receiving a diagnosis.
Some sites are running out of kits, while labs are reporting shortages of materials and workers to process the swabs.
Some frustrated Americans are left to wonder why the U.S. can’t seem to get its act together, especially after it was given fair warning as the virus wreaked havoc in China and then Italy, Spain and New York.