San Diego Coronavirus Testing Capacity Ramps Up

Speaker 1: 00:00 In his daily coven 19 update. Governor Gavin Newsome focused on the stress of living through this pandemic and the kind of physical and emotional toll it can take. Newsome says California surgeon general, dr Nadine Burke Harris has developed a program to help Californians keep healthy. Speaker 2: 00:18 I've tasked the uh, surgeon general of the state of California to put together a strategy and a protocol to help support you and to support caregivers that need the peer-to-peer support Speaker 1: 00:30 more coming up on emotional support through this crisis later in our show. Meanwhile, the fight against the virus continues in labs around the state. Testing is the key to learning so much about the spread of coven 19 so the lack of testing supplies and the rationing of tests to people who fit only a specific criteria has been one of the most frustrating aspects of the outbreak. But there are signs. The testing log jam may be loosening up. Testing for covert 19 in San Diego County now has the capacity to conduct roughly 1200 tests a day. Over the weekend. Governor Newsome announced a new task for us, including UC San Diego to work with different vendors and create several testing hubs throughout the state. Joining me is Dr. David pride, an infectious disease specialist and microbiology lab director at UC San Diego Health's center for advanced laboratory medicine and dr. Pride, welcome to the program testing has been described by one of your colleagues as quote a weapon to reverse the pandemic. Remind us why testing is key to address the covert 19 outbreak. Speaker 3: 01:39 Well, I think in any pandemic, regardless of whether it's called 19 or another virus, knowing who has it is really the key to stopping it spread. Um, so if you look at what's happened say in, in other countries who have managed to develop testing really quickly, they've actually managed to limit the spread of the virus quite well. Because if you can identify who has the disease, you can quarantine those individuals so that they cannot spread it. Speaker 1: 02:10 Now you expect UC San Diego's testing capacity to go from about 700 tests a day to up to 1500 per day by mid April. How are you doing this? Speaker 3: 02:21 So, uh, one of the strategies that we've used to, uh, increase our testing capacity has been to diversify what we're doing. Um, so there's a large sort of limitation and what a lot of manufacturers can provide. So what we've done is we've started to utilize multiple different manufacturers. This is something that most laboratories, including our own wouldn't do in normal times, but we've got such large patient demand for testing that we felt like if we diversified early, then we would, uh, be able to manage to obtain the materials that we to meet our patient's demands. Speaker 1: 03:01 So if testing capacity is growing, does that mean the shortage of tests is about to be over? Speaker 3: 03:07 It's really tough to say. Um, testing capacity has a ramped up at several sites really across our state. And, uh, I think a lot of us feel like we're able to manage, uh, uh, those testing shortages right now. But there's a lot of places still around the state and across the country that, uh, cannot meet their current testing demands. So I think one of the big issues is how can we distribute testing capacity around so that everyone who needs a test can actually obtain a test. Speaker 1: 03:40 And one of the reasons that I've heard why testing has been slow is a shortage of reagents used to conduct the test. Do those shortages still persist? Speaker 3: 03:50 They'll shortages do persist. They have gotten better since we first started, when we first started being interested in developing our own tests was about the time, uh, when the FDA released their guidance on February 29th and at that time trying to obtain access to testing materials was extraordinarily difficult. It's still difficult, but a lot of that backlog has been relieved over time as manufacturers have ramped up their production of testing, uh, consumables. Speaker 1: 04:22 And what about the current turnaround time for test results? What does that look like? Speaker 3: 04:26 So that's a problem at some places and not a problem at other places. For example, at our institution, we're running multiple different platforms, uh, to perform this test. And what we're able to provide is really a maximum of about 12 hour turnaround times for most of the patients. Uh, they'll get better than 12 hour turnaround times, which means that, you know, if you show up, um, you, uh, we can tell you whether or not you have the virus within 12 hours and that really helps health care workers so that they're not potentially exposed, uh, to other people. Uh, it helps the patients because they know whether they, uh, whether they get admitted to the hospital or not, they need to be quarantine. So, uh, being able to test and give an answer relatively quickly is really important. At other places they have to send their testing out to reference laboratories. And, uh, just with the shipping of the specimens to those places and the large backlogs that you still see it, some reference laboratories, it's taking days to get results rather than hours. Speaker 1: 05:30 Isn't there a new point of care rapid coven test machine from the Abbott company? What is that used for? Speaker 3: 05:37 It depends on the institution. Um, the best use is for critically ill patients knowing whether or not they had the disease, uh, really quickly. But the benefit of a test such as the app it is, it can be placed in multiple different locations so that now even, uh, you know, your doctor's office, which might be, you know, located in a remote area, uh, could potentially have access to testing at UC San Diego. We are bringing this test online, uh, shortly Speaker 1: 06:08 and that delivers a positive test in five minutes. Speaker 3: 06:11 It can deliver a positive test and as little as five minutes, uh, and a negative test and as little as 15 minutes so that you can tell your patients fairly quickly whether or not they have the disease and what particular precautions, if any, they need to take. Speaker 1: 06:28 Now, dr pride, up until now, testing has been reserved for people who fit strict guidelines for age and health, et cetera. With more testing coming online, do you expect the guidelines will begin to loosen Speaker 3: 06:41 and a lot of those guidelines that you've mentioned are really institution specific? When we started off on March the 10th with our Cova testing, in fact, we had very strict guidelines as to who could be testing. And those guidelines were really based on the number of tests that we could perform and the number of materials to perform the test that we had since then, that's sort of backlog has improved significantly. So at our institution, we've been, uh, sort of, uh, uh, very adding different groups of patients that can be tested to the point where we're testing. Um, most all of our population, uh, who, uh, would, would qualify under relaxed criteria to be tested at other institutions, uh, who don't have the testing capacity that we have. They're still having to limit testing, uh, to those more severely ill populations Speaker 1: 07:35 over the weekend, the governor and announced UC San Diego along with UC Davis as part of a new statewide task force. Can you tell us more about this partnership? Speaker 3: 07:46 Uh, well, uh, I think, you know, my sort of perspective on it is that since this began, uh, UC San Diego has, has really been on a mission to increase our testing capacity because, uh, not only do we want to be able to test our patients, but we would like to be able to test the broader San Diego. And the broader California community. Uh, so the governor, uh, has been in contact with folks at here at UC San Diego, folks at UC Davis and some other institutions trying to sort of bring us all together to meet the demands of the state of California. And we're happy to do whatever we can. Uh, and at UC San Diego to help meet those demands. Speaker 1: 08:34 The governor said something about that partnership creating testing hubs. What do you know about them? Speaker 3: 08:40 Yeah, so, uh, you know, as, as sort of outline, he outlined, uh, uh, UC San Diego as one of those, uh, potential testing hubs. And as I sort of mentioned earlier, we do have a pretty good testing right now and we're happy to utilize some of that testing capacity to extend to other institutions for testing as well. And we're really in the process of trying to figure out who those partners might be that we can sort of help out to meet the California testing demands. Speaker 1: 09:15 What can we expect moving forward? What does current modeling show about where we're headed with the virus? Speaker 3: 09:21 It's, it's tough to say, uh, you know, because I think we've all seen the sort of same models, uh, and, and predicted what the mortality is going to be. Uh, but, uh, one of the things that I think we're starting to see in places like California and other parts of the country is that the sort of social distancing really seems to be having an impact. And I think as we sort of have, uh, developed, uh, our testing platform so that we can run up to a thousand tests a day. We were expecting demand to be maybe a little bit greater than it is right now, but the social distinct thing has had such a great impact that we're not necessarily on the same trajectory that we projected we would be, uh, even a week or two ago. So I don't know what the sort of estimated mortality is going to be in California or even the broader, uh, United States. Uh, and, and in part, just because we've taken measures to try to, uh, basically alter those curves. Speaker 1: 10:27 I've been speaking with Dr. David pride with UC San Diego health center for advanced laboratory medicine. Dr pride, thank you so much. Speaker 4: 10:40 [inaudible].