A health care worker Wednesday tests a patient for the coronavirus at a drive-through site outside the South Bend Clinic’s Immediate Care Center in Mishawaka. Staff photo by Robert Franklin
SOUTH BEND — If you have symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat and shortness of breath, and fear you have the coronavirus, you might assume you can quickly get a test to find out.
But it hasn’t been that simple in Michiana and throughout Indiana.
The Indiana State Department of Health last week received only enough test kits from the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention to test about 100 people, so it is restricting tests to people who had prolonged exposure to someone who was infected or who recently traveled to countries with high infection rates.
“One challenge has been the availability of testing throughout the state,” said Dr. Mark Fox, St. Joseph County’s deputy health officer. “The bigger challenge, frankly, is they follow a very strict protocol on determining who should be tested.”
As of late Wednesday, the state agency, which can turn around test results in 24 hours, had tested only 43 people.
Megan Wade-Taxler, an ISDH spokeswoman, declined Wednesday to say how many test kits were left. She said the agency has requested more from the CDC but she did not reply via email when asked when they might be delivered.
Under growing pressure to test more people faster, the state agency has started allowing private commercial labs Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp to process tests, with projected turnaround times of three to five days.
Fox estimated that 50 to 60 people in St. Joseph County had been tested though commercial labs. The county’s first confirmed case, announced Wednesday, came from a commercial lab that received the patient’s sample Monday, a two-day turnaround.
Still, State Rep. Ryan Dvorak, D-South Bend, said he’s heard of commercial lab tests taking five days.
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