California is making progress on reducing a massive backlog of coronavirus tests that experts had said made it hard to get a handle on the true spread of the deadly virus in the state, which now has more than 12,000 confirmed cases.
At a news conference on Saturday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he owned the backlog and announced that the number of tests pending had been reduced from nearly 60,000 to about 13,000. Newsom said the delay was personally frustrating, with some people waiting 12 days to get their results.
“The testing space has been a challenging one for us, and I own that,” Newsom said. “I have a responsibility as your governor to do better and to do more testing in the state of California.”
The governor praised commercial labs for reducing the number of pending tests. Experts had earlier said labs had been overwhelmed by the demand, with one company, Quest Diagnostics, saying in a statement on Thursday it had a backlog of 115,000 tests at 12 labs nationwide. In late March the company finished switching to a higher throughput test and the company can now process 30,000 tests a day.
So far California has completed 126,700 tests, Newsom said, with 12,026 positive cases — a 12.4 percent increase from the day before. The state has 2,300 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and 1,008 in ICU — a nearly 11 percent increase. Newsom said the state would soon provide a breakdown of how many of the roughly 47,000 backlogged tests that were cleared by today came back positive.
To cut back the testing backlog, Newsom said he convened a task force with consultants and public and private sector leaders, chaired by Dr. Charity Dean, assistant director at California’s public health department, and Paul Markovich, CEO of Blue Shield of California.
“I can confidently say its a new day, and we’re turning the page on our old approach,” he said.
The governor added that he wants to see at least a five-fold increase in testing in the state in the next few weeks, announcing several public and private partnerships to get there. The University of California, Davis and the University of California, San Diego will create at least five to seven hubs for testing spread out throughout the state, he said.
Additionally, Newsom announced more point-of-care testing sites that can return results in 5 to 15 minutes would be rolled out by a private company.
“Abbott Laboratories is now committed to 75 testing sites in the state of California, working with 13 of our hospital systems,” Newsom said. “This will allow us, along with the hubs, more throughout testing, much closer collaboration, more data collection in real-time — not just positives, but negatives.”
Newsom also praised Stanford Health for developing the first “home-grown” blood sample tests. The serological test uses blood samples, instead of swabs, to determine if a patient’s immune system has developed antibodies in response to coronavirus infection.
The governor also announced a new website, covid19supplies.ca.gov, for businesses and other organizations to describe medical supplies they may have available for donation or sale.
Check back for updates.
Reporter Nico Savidge contributed to this report.
