Long queues for Covid-19 testing when the Omicron variant threatens
Because the Omicron variant spreads faster than any other coronavirus variant before it, Biden White House has pushed to make testing more accessible. They have been doing this for several months, but critics say it is nowhere near enough.
Supply just can’t keep up with demand, and yet with Omicron being so much more contagious, testing will be more important than ever, said Mara Aspinall, a professor of practice at the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University.
“We are in a very, very precarious moment,” Aspinall said. “Testing is our only exit strategy of all this.”
If people do not test, it puts the country at risk of a greater spread of the disease.
“Testing is the core because without it, there is no way people will isolate themselves,”[ads1]; Aspinall said.
Most diseases in the United States now are still caused by the Delta variant.
In addition to the usual demand for tests, the current increase comes from people with a few different needs, she said. Some people have symptoms, and with the flu and other viruses floating around, they want to know if they have Covid-19. Others will test before boarding the plane or spending time with family over Christmas. Both are important reasons to take a test, she said, but the test supply is just not ready for them.
“As recently as a week ago, I thought maybe we had enough tests, but if Omicron ends up with 200,000 or 300,000 cases a day, we probably do not have enough tests,” said Aspinall. “At every step we thought it was close enough, and now we know it’s not enough.”
Last week, Jeff Zients, response coordinator for Covid-19 in the White House, insisted that “there is plenty of free testing across the country.”
Since then, cases have increased dramatically in some states. The United States now has an average of 121,707 new Covid-19 cases every day, according to Johns Hopkins University. New case rates have remained steady over the past week, but at levels last seen in September at the end of the summer upturn. And cases are increasing with a much faster cut in parts of the Northeast, Midwest and South.
“Shall we just send one to every American?” she asked.
However, similar initiatives already exist at the local level in some cities.
While some public health experts have said they want the federal government to send tests to everyone, as some European countries do, Aspinall does not think it would be possible. The program will be expensive and may need additional funding from Congress that may not come. Secondly, not everyone who gets one will use the tests, and the tests are too important to waste.
When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked during a press briefing on Monday why the US government has not conducted quick tests for free as other countries have done, Zients doubled his claim that the country has sufficient tests available.
In this way, the Biden administration has taken steps to make Covid-19 testing more accessible.
Why American testing lags behind
The reasons why testing can not keep up with demand vary.
Some problems stem from the test industry. “Companies do not always have enough employees to run many third shifts,” said Aspinall.
But the bigger problem may be with the regulatory environment itself. Companies such as Roche and Siemens have publicly stated that they have submitted their Covid-19 rapid tests for authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration, Aspinall said, but the tests have not been authorized yet. The same tests are already used in Asia. It is unclear what the stop with the FDA is.
“We need to find a way, whether it’s staffing or something else, to get enough resources to the FDA,” Aspinall said.
Alex Tabarrok, an economics professor at George Mason University who co-authored a website on FDA policies and reforms, told CNN “The FDA has been too slow to approve rapid antigen tests. As a result, prices for these tests are much higher in the United States than in the rest of the world.”
Michael Mina, a test expert and epidemiologist who works as head of science at the biotechnology software company eMed, believes that the FDA is thinking of fast Covid-19 tests completely wrong. The agency views these tests as a medical device, and medical devices require “long, slow clinical trials that take months and months and millions of dollars.” He said instead that the FDA should think of them as a public health tool. Mina said he does not want the FDA to accept lower quality tests, but lower sensitivity would be ok.
“If I think about public health, I need a test that is very fast. It does not have to be as sensitive as a PCR test,” said Mina.
He said he has talked to manufacturers who do many millions of tests a day who will not bother the US market because the standard is too high and many other countries buy them.
“The FDA does not really seem to be able to shake. It’s such a horribly terrible problem,” Mina said.
What is clear is that the country must do everything it can to increase access to testing, said Aspinall.
“Testing and isolation is the way to slow it down and stop it,” Aspinall said. “We can not give the virus more victims.”
