Both Labcorp and Quest can test.
Yeah.
We’ve been trying Labcorp to get us going with testing for days.
Very limited number of tests. For now our clinic can’t get any.
Special viral culture medium is very limited and on back order.
Can’t get straight from Labcorp, local Health Department and CDC exactly how to swab, and exactly how to send.
It’s still a cluster f###.
Found this online:
Testing for coronavirus typically uses reagents, which are chemical substances used in laboratory analyses. The reagents extract, purify and stabilize RNA, or ribonucleic acid, in samples taken from patients suspected of having COVID-19.
That’s the first step in confirming or ruling out a tentative diagnosis. Qiagen says it leads the world in this type of testing.
Testing demand has led to a shortage of reagents for the RNA extraction process, said Dr. Eric Blank, the chief program officer for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local governmental health laboratories in the USA and responds to disease outbreaks.
“We are now in the phase of the response where demand for testing is greater than the tests available, even when the private/commercial sector is doing testing,” Blank said in an email.
The Society for Microbiology posted a warning on its website that the shortage could delay COVID-19 testing.
“We are deeply concerned that as the number of tests increases dramatically over the coming weeks, clinical labs will be unable to deploy them without these critical components,” the microbiology group said.
Along with increasing its production, Qiagen hired more employees and increased manufacturing at a facility in Germantown, Maryland.
“Given our ongoing supply to the United States,” Theuringer said, “we are now working directly with the customers to understand their flexibility and specific needs in order to be able to ensure broad availability of our products.”
This was revised March 9:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/guidelines-clinical-specimens.html
Thank you for your posts on this!