Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Recent Surges Adding New Stress To COVID Testing Capacity
In the early months of the nation’s outbreak, testing posed a significant problem, as supplies fell far short and officials raced to understand how to best handle the virus. Since then, the United States has vastly ramped up its testing capability, conducting nearly 15 million tests in June, about three times as many as it had in April. But in recent weeks, as cases have surged in many states, the demand for testing has soared, surpassing capacity and creating a new testing crisis. (Mervosh and Fernandez, 7/6)
New Orleans' city-run coronavirus testing site ran out of tests within minutes of opening on Monday, showcasing the high testing demand in the city as cases rise amid a national shortage in testing supplies. More than 150 people were standing in line when the site at Dillard University in Gentilly opened at 8 a.m., which meant the city hit its daily testing capacity of 150 by 8:02 a.m., according to city officials. (Williams, 7/6)
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. (Bizjak, 7/6)
Meanwhile, researchers are focusing on testing technology upgrades —
Researchers around the world are working on the next generation of coronavirus tests that give answers in less than an hour, without onerous equipment or highly trained personnel. The latest so-called point-of-care tests, which could be done in a doctor’s office or even at home, would be a welcome upgrade from today’s status quo: uncomfortable swabs that snake up the nose and can take several days to produce results. (Wu, 7/6)
And as case counts rise, contact tracers face challenges -
Despite hopes for relief this summer, the US is battling the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic -- so much so that across the South and Southwest contact tracing is no longer possible, according to a health expert. "The cases are rising so rapidly, that we cannot even do contact tracing anymore. I don't see how it's possible to even do that," Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN's Anderson Cooper Monday. (Holcombe, 7/7)
After losing his job abruptly amid the coronavirus in March, Alejandro Curbelo saw a TV ad for a unique volunteering opportunity to help with contact tracing in the U.S. At the time Curbelo, a Cuban native, was living in Cancun, Mexico, and had been working in the tourism industry before being laid off. Without any experience in the medical field, or any knowledge of what the opportunity would entail, Curbelo told ABC News he signed up to become a contact tracer for a community hospital in South Florida – more than 500 miles from his home in Mexico. But he quickly noticed a problem: Most contact tracing training resources were in English, which could hamper efforts to reach out to Latino communities in the U.S. (Romero, Siegel and Bhatt, 7/7)
The push to use smartphone apps to track the spread of coronavirus is creating a potential jackpot for hackers worldwide — and the U.S. offers a fat, loosely defended target. In the Qatar Covid-19 app, researchers found a vulnerability that would’ve let hackers obtain more than a million people’s national ID numbers and health status. In India’s app, a researcher discovered a security gap that allowed him to determine who was sick in individual homes. And researchers uncovered seven security flaws in a pilot app in the U.K. (Starks, 7/6)
