WASHINGTON (AP) – Just five weeks ago, Los Angeles County was conducting more than 350,000 weekly coronavirus tests, including a huge drive-thru at Dodger Stadium, as healthcare professionals rushed to contain the worst COVID- access point. 19 from the USA
Now, county officials say the tests almost failed. More than 180 government-backed sites are operating at just a third of their capacity.
“It is shocking how quickly we move from a speed of 160 kilometers per hour to around 25 kilometers per hour,” said Dr. Clemens Hong, who leads the county’s test operation.
After a year of struggling to increase testing, communities across the country are seeing demand plummet, closing test sites or even trying to return supplies.
The drop in screening comes at a significant time in the outbreak: experts are cautiously optimistic that COVID-19 is retreating after killing more than 500,000 people in the U.S., but fear that emerging variants could prolong the epidemic.
“Everyone is hopeful for a quick and wide vaccination, but I don’t think we’re at a point where we can let our guard down yet,” said Hong. “We just don’t have enough immune people to rule out another sudden increase.”
Tests in the US peaked on January 15, when the country averaged more than 2 million tests a day. Since then, the average number of daily exams has dropped by more than 28%. The decline reflects the decline in all major virus measures since January, including new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Officials say these encouraging trends, along with the harsh winter, the end of the holiday travel season, pandemic fatigue and a growing focus on vaccinations are undermining interest in testing.
“When you combine all of these factors, you see that decrease,” said Dr. Richard Pescatore, of the Delaware health department, where daily tests have dropped more than 40% since the peak in January. “People just don’t go to the test sites.”
But tests remain important to track and contain the outbreak.
LA County is opening up more testing options near public transportation, schools and offices to make it more convenient. And Santa Clara County officials are asking residents to “continue testing regularly,” highlighting new mobile test buses and pop-up sites.
President Joe Biden has promised to renew the country’s testing system, investing billions more in supplies and government coordination. But with demand dropping rapidly, the country may soon have an excess of unused supplies. The United States will be able to carry out nearly 1 billion monthly tests by June, according to projections from researchers at Arizona State University. This is more than 25 times the country’s current rate of around 40 million tests reported per month.
With more than 150 million new doses of vaccine due to be delivered by the end of March, testing is likely to drop even further as local governments transfer staff and resources for vaccine delivery.
“You have to choose your battles here,” said Dr. Jeffrey Engel, of the State and Territorial Epidemiologists Council. “Everyone would agree that if you have a public health nurse, you are going to use that person for vaccination, not for testing.”
Some experts say the country should double its tests to prevent outbreaks of coronavirus variants that have spread in the UK, South Africa and elsewhere.
“We need to use the tests to continue the downward trend,” said Dr. Jonathan Quick of the Rockefeller Foundation, who has been advising Biden employees. “We need to have it there to catch the peaks of the variants.”
Last week, Minnesota began asking families to take the test every two weeks until the end of the school year, as more students return to the classroom.
“To protect this progress, we need to use all the tools at our disposal,” said Dan Huff, an assistant state health commissioner.
But some of the biggest advocates of vocal testing are less concerned with the decline in screening. From a public health perspective, testing is effective if it helps to quickly find infected people, track their contacts and isolate them to prevent further spread. In most of the United States, this never happened.
During the holiday season, many Americans still had to wait days to receive test results, making them virtually useless. This led to testing fatigue and decreasing interest, said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard University.
“It doesn’t exactly give you gratifying and immediate feedback,” said Mina. “Therefore, people’s willingness or interest in taking the test begins to wane.”
Still, US test makers continue to increase production, with another 110 million rapid, domestic tests expected to hit the market next month.
Government officials have long assumed that this growing arsenal of cheap 15-minute tests would be used to regularly screen millions of students and teachers as face-to-face classes resume. 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 detachment.
Even without strong federal support, educational leaders say the testing programs will be important in promoting the public confidence needed to fully reopen schools, including in the fall, when cases are expected to increase again.
“Schools are rightly asking themselves, ‘Is it worth squeezing the juice to start a major testing effort?’” Said Mike Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit organization that advises districts in more than 25 states . “Our message to the school systems we work with is, ‘Yes, you need to pass comprehensive tests because you are going to need them.’”
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Associated Press writer Brian Melley of Los Angeles and AP data journalist Nicky Forster of New York contributed to this 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. The AP is solely responsible for all content.