AtlAg75 said:
Posting this as another data point and know there isn't a direct answer. My sister in law (age 72 and with underlying health issues - rectal cancer few years ago, lymph node issues, colostomy) went into the hospital this past Monday night in Phoenix with symptoms of pneumonia and O2 levels dropping into the 70's while she was waiting in ER). Hospital did not want to admit her but eventually did.
Tests that night came back negative for viral pneumonia and so they assumed Covid 19 and tested her for that. This was on Tuesday. The kick in the ass is that they told her that day that it would take 3 - 4 weeks to get test results and that they would not reach out to contacts or places she had been until they received the results. What would it matter in a month where she had been? This can't be standard and she had the distinct impression that AZ was trying to minimize the data related to Covid 19.
She was released from the hospital yesterday with O2 still dropping into the 70's at night. Said they needed the bed for someone worse.
Just curious if any of the Dr's here have heard of test results taking this long and if so, why that would still be the case.
Ultimately it depends on where that specific hospital is having their tests run. If they're relying on their own internal lab or something, then their backlog could be that long I guess, but that doesn't sound right.
Most places are using their internal or local labs to capacity, then shipping off other samples to the large clinical testing companies.
My understanding is that most people are being told 3/4 days, but actually getting results in more like 5/6 days, for those that are getting results at all.
We're currently only processing samples from healthcare workers while we add capacity, and those are being turned around in 1 day. And unfortunately our biggest hurdle to scaling up is waiting for necessary reagents to be delivered. For the smaller local testing labs like mine, we're considered "4th tier" in priority for receiving reagents. Government, CDC, hospital systems, large testing corporations are all above the smaller local labs.
Every other small testing lab I know of is experiencing the same thing. Most of the item back-order dates I'm being given are about 3 weeks from now, but it keeps changing.