Via CNN.com, a report by Rachana Pradhan, Jordan Rau, and Lauren Weber of Kaiser Health News: Nursing homes still see dangerously long waits for Covid-19 test results. Excerpt:
(KHN)Nursing homes are still taking days to get back Covid-19 test results as many shun the Trump administration's central strategy to limit the spread of the virus among old and sick Americans.
In late summer, federal officials began distributing to nursing homes millions of point-of-care antigen tests, which can be given on-site and report the presence or absence of the virus within minutes. By January, the Department of Health and Human Services is slated to send roughly 23 million rapid tests.
But as of Oct. 25, 38% of the nation's roughly 15,000 nursing homes have yet to use a point-of-care test, a KHN analysis of nursing home records shows.
The numbers suggest a basic disagreement among the Trump administration, state health officials and nursing home administrators over the best way to test this population and how to strike the right balance between speed and accuracy. Many nursing homes still primarily send samples out to laboratories, using a type of test that's considered more reliable but can take days to deliver results.
As a result, in 29% of the approximately 13,000 facilities that provided their testing speed to the government, results for residents took an average of three days or more, the analysis found. Just 17% of nursing homes reported their average turnaround time was less than a day, and the remainder tended to get results in one or two days. Wait times for test results of staff members were similar.
Those lags could have devastating consequences, because even one undetected infection can quietly but rapidly trigger a broad outbreak. It's especially concerning as winter sets in and the pandemic notches daily records of infections.
In the meantime, the coronavirus continues its march through institutions. Nursing homes have reported more than 262,000 infections and 59,000 deaths since the government began collecting the information in May. Even without estimating how many residents died from Covid-19 before then, reported nursing home deaths amount to more than a quarter of all Covid-19 fatalities in the U.S. so far.
During the week ending Oct. 25, the most recent period for which data is available, a third of skilled nursing facilities reported a new suspected or confirmed coronavirus infection of a resident or staff member.
