WASHINGTON (AP) – Just five weeks ago, Los Angeles County ran more than 350,000 weekly coronavirus tests, including at a massive site at Dodger Stadium, as health workers ran to contain the worst COVID hotspot -19 from the USA
Now, county officials say testing has almost collapsed. More than 180 government-supported sites operate at only a third of their capacity.
“It’s shocking how fast I’ve gone from traveling at 100 miles per hour to about 25,” said Dr. Clemens Hong, who is leading the county’s testing operation.
After a year of fighting to increase testing, communities across the country are seeing a declining demand, closing test sites or even trying to return supply.
The drop in screening comes at a significant time of the outbreak: experts are cautiously optimistic that COVID-19 will withdraw after killing more than 500,000 people in the US, but worried that emerging options could prolong the epidemic.
“Everyone is full of hope for rapid, large-scale vaccinations, but I don’t think we’re at a time when we’re still on guard.” “We just don’t have enough people who are immune to rule out new growth.”
Tests in the United States peaked on January 15, when the country averaged more than 2 million tests a day. Since then, the average number of daily tests has dropped by more than 28%. Falling mirrors have been declining in all major virus measures since January, including new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Officials say those encouraging trends, coupled with harsh winter weather, the end of the holiday travel season, pandemic fatigue and a growing focus on vaccinations, are of interest for testing.
“When you combine them all together, you see this decline,” said Dr. Richard Pescatore of the Delaware Department of Health, where daily testing has dropped by more than 40 percent since January. “People just won’t go out to test sites.”
But testing remains important for tracking and containing the outbreak.
LA County is opening up more testing options near public transportation, schools and offices to make it more convenient. Officials in Santa Clara County also urge residents to “continue to be tested regularly,” pointing out new mobile test buses and pop-up sites.
President Joe Biden has promised to modernize the nation’s testing system by investing extra billions in government procurement and coordination. But with declining demand, the country could soon have a lot of unused supplies. The United States will be able to perform nearly 1 billion tests a month by June, according to researchers at Arizona State University. This is more than 25 times the current rate of the country, about 40 million tests reported per month.
With more than 150 million new doses of the vaccine to be delivered by the end of March, testing is likely to decline as local governments transfer staff and resources to deliver vaccines.
“You have to choose your battles here,” said Dr. Jeffrey Engel of the State Council and Territorial Epidemiologists. “Everyone would agree that if you have a public health nurse, you will use that person for vaccination, not for testing.”
Some experts say the country needs to double tests to avoid the emergence of coronavirus variants that have spread to Britain, South Africa and elsewhere.
“We need to use the tests to continue the downward trend,” said Dr. Jonathan Quick of the Rockefeller Foundation, who advised Biden officials. “We need to have him there to catch overvoltages.”
Last week, Minnesota began urging families to take tests every two weeks until the end of the school year as more students return to class.
“To protect this progress, we must use all the tools at our disposal,” said Dan Huff, an assistant state health commissioner.
But some of the most vocal supporters of testing are less worried about decreased screening. From a public health point of view, testing is effective if it helps to quickly find infected people, track contacts and isolate them to stop the spread. In most parts of the United States, this has never happened.
During the holiday season, many Americans had to wait days to receive test results, making them largely useless. This has led to fatigue testing and decreased interest, said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard University.
“It doesn’t give you a lot of immediate and pleasant feedback,” Mina said. “So people’s desire or interest in being tested is starting to decline.”
However, US test manufacturers continue to increase production, with another 110 million rapid and home tests expected to hit the market next month.
Government officials have long assumed this growing arsenal of cheap, 15-minute tests that will be used to regularly examine millions of students and teachers as classes resume in person. But recent guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not emphasize testing, describing it as an “additional layer” of protection behind basic measures such as masking and social distancing.
Even without strong federal support, education leaders say testing programs will be important in building the public confidence needed to fully reopen schools, including in the fall, when cases are expected to rise again.
“Schools have rightly wondered, ‘Is it worth the juice to try a big test? Said Mike Magee, CEO of Change Leaders, a nonprofit that advises districts in more than 25 states. “Our message to the school systems we’re working with is, ‘Yes, you need to take comprehensive testing, because you’re going to need it.'”
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Associated Press writer Brian Melley of Los Angeles and AP data journalist Nicky Forster of New York contributed to the report.
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Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. AP is solely responsible for all content.