Posted on 12/22/2022 11:44:42 AM PST by lightman
A committee of infectious disease researchers this week issued a statement urging hospitals to stop testing new admissions for COVID-19, saying that doing so will extend patients’ wait times.
Researchers and doctors affiliated with the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, a nonprofit organization, said that hospitals should not automatically test for the virus because it can cause “delays in patient placement” and “postponement of necessary procedures” unrelated to COVID-19, according to a research paper published online by Cambridge University.
“As the pandemic evolved, asymptomatic patient screening had some unintended consequences,” they wrote. “Adverse outcomes related to asymptomatic testing include” those aforementioned delays as well as “strains on laboratory and testing personnel and resources, and increased costs,” they continued.
“Importantly, assessments of the costs associated with asymptomatic screening are affected by the prevalence of infection in the population tested and the type of test utilized,” the researchers stated, adding that “an increasing number of studies have noted the relatively low yield of identification of so-called ‘silent’ infections, with positivity rates from such testing often falling below 1 percent.”
“The use of asymptomatic screening is a unique yet resource-intensive tool that arguably has been overused,” a summary of the article stated. Although it is imperative to prevent health care-associated “spread of respiratory pathogens, we must critically assess interventions that, when added upon core layers of infection prevention, may not attain the intended impact and may have unintended consequences for patients and HCP.” Epoch Times Photo A patient registers with administration staff at St George Hospital in Sydney, Australia, on May 15, 2020. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
A study released in May 2022 by the Cook County Department of Emergency Medicine in Illinois showed that routine testing for asymptomatic COVID-19 extended patients’ wait times in emergency rooms by about seven hours on average.
The authors of the Cambridge paper cited previous research that found that testing added 1.89 hours to the length of an emergency department stay. Another study they cited found that it cost about $12,500, on average, to identify one asymptomatic COVID-19 patient via asymptomatic testing policies.
Such testing regimes, they concluded, have little to no benefit if other prevention measures are intact in hospitals and other facilities. That includes, according to the paper, proper ventilation and hand hygiene.
“With increased population immunity to SARS-CoV-2, milder clinical outcomes, greater access to effective vaccines and therapeutics, and an increased published experience concerning asymptomatic screening, it is important to assess the impact of this intervention and how it should fit into infection prevention programs moving forward,” the group wrote. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.
A member of the group, Dr. Thomas Talbot—an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University—described the benefits from routine COVID-19 testing as “small” and are easily “over ridden by potential harms.”
“The small benefits that could come from asymptomatic testing at this stage in the pandemic are over ridden by potential harms from delays in procedures, delays in patient transfers, and strains on laboratory capacity and personnel,” Talbot said. “Since some tests can detect residual virus for a long period, patients who test positive may not be contagious.”
\ Finally...some common sense.
asymptomatic testing
Life is a COVID symptom...
Lies by affirmation are no better than lies by omission, but it’s a hard habit to break.
The Medical Industrial Complex just wants more Covid extortion blood money from the US taxpayers. How much did they get for the past three years for Covid patients. Extortion Covid racket.
Its never been about money. It’s been about control.
But, illegals with Polio, Bubonic Plague, Ebola...step to the front of the line, Please!
*SPIT*
“lies by omission”
What is a lie by omission?
I have no responsibility to answer your questions,
or to volunteer information to you.
I do not lie, but I don’t answer questions I don’t want to.
I certainly do not volunteer information to people that put me,or my family in danger, eg the government and its agents.
I don’t know about everyone else here, but I personally have lost all respect for the majority of the medical community over this fraud, they should all be sent to Afghanistan to live out their pathetic lives
Maybe I’m just sceptical, but I see “Stop testing for COVID!” as a way for the powers that be to cook the books on infection rates justifying a new lockdown. And there will be no one to check their numbers, as the hospitals have stopped checking.
It could also be a way of ratcheting down the numbers to justify ending mandates...can’t go from sixty to zero without putting the Chads and Karens in full blown panic.
HAHAHA. This isn’t about testing. This is about “BIDEN ENDS PANDEMIC” the same way Obama ended the swine flu pandemic by ordering the CDC to stop testing for it.
Trust me eye, you ain't by yourself. I was 3/4 the way there before the plandemic. Never again will I just take their word on anything. I'd rather ship them some place where Globull warming is rare. Antarctica could use some repopulation.
Vindicated again.
Mine:
“Yes: It burns when I pee.”
Right?
Mine:
“Yes: It burns when I pee.”
well, you are not lying.
That’s a new one on me (symptom).
The comment usually leads into sarcasm:
“But I thought the shot would protect me from EVERYTHING!!!???”
yes. Been there, done that.
I live in the Philippines, and we still have covid here (our cousin caught a mild case while visiting in November). So they are very strict in testing before they will see you in the ER.
when I collapsed last month at home and asked to go to the ER, I had to wait 2 hours until my covid test was negative to be admitted (all covid cases are sent to a special hospital nearby, and I went to the private hospital where my relatives practice medicine).
My symptoms and history suggested to me that it was hypokalemia and dehydration from a UTI (which I have had before), and I was annoyed and kept asking them to put in an IV and rehydrate me while I was waiting, which of course they didn't do because no doctor had seen me.
By the way: My electrolytes were fine, my covid was negative, but my test for Dengue fever came back positive and I was in the hospital for a week on treatment.
Lots of Dengue in the area.
Amazing....too much of the world acts as though COVID was the only pathogen.
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