Despite the United States conducting more COVID-19 tests than ever, most states – including Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia – are falling behind on testing as their outbreaks grow more severe and slow processing times resurface as a national issue.
Tennessee health commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey acknowledged the problem during a news conference on Tuesday, citing a backlog at labs that are struggling to keep up with high influxes of samples.
“We’ve got a lot of testing right now. … The problem right now is lab throughput and getting a reasonable turnaround time,” Piercey said.
Testing remains a cornerstone of the public health response to COVID-19 until a safe, effective vaccine is readily available. Until then, finding out who’s infected, isolating those people and identifying people they’ve contacted so those people can be tested, too, are key to containing the virus. There’s also a great economic need for testing as more businesses begin relying on testing employees to safely return to work.
Although the state is working on some creative strategies to improve the situation, Piercey said some labs across the state are taking between five and six days to run a sample once receiving it in the mail.