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WASHINGTON (AP) – Just five weeks ago, Los Angeles County conducted more than 350,000 weekly coronavirus tests, including at a massive drive-thru site at Dodger Stadium, as health workers rushed to contain the worst COVID-19 hotspot in the United States.
Now county officials say the tests have almost collapsed. More than 180 government-funded sites are operating at only one-third of their capacity.
“It’s shocking how fast we’ve gone from 100 miles an hour to around 25,” said Dr Clemens Hong, who heads the county testing operation.
After a year of struggling to boost testing, communities across the country are seeing demand plummet, shutting down testing sites or even trying to return supplies.
The drop in screening comes at an important time in the epidemic: Experts are cautiously optimistic that COVID-19 is receding after killing more than 500,000 people in the United States, but fear that emerging variants may prolong the epidemic.
“Everyone’s hoping for quick and widespread immunizations, but I don’t think we’re at a point where we can let our guard down just yet,” Hong said. “We just don’t have enough immune people to rule out another outbreak.”
Testing in the United States peaked on January 15, when the country averaged more than 2 million tests per day. Since then, the average number of daily tests has fallen by more than 28%. The drop reflects the drop in all major viral measurements since January, including new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Officials say these encouraging trends, coupled with harsh winter conditions, the end of the holiday season, pandemic fatigue and a growing focus on vaccinations are undermining interest in testing.
“When you combine all of these factors together, you see this decrease,” said Dr. Richard Pescatore of the Delaware Department of Health, where daily tests have fallen more than 40% since the January peak. “People just won’t go to the test sites.”
But testing remains important to monitor and contain the epidemic.
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 urging residents to “continue to get tested regularly,” highlighting new mobile test buses and pop-up sites.
President Joe Biden has vowed to revamp the country’s testing system by investing billions more in supplies and government coordination. But with rapidly declining demand, the country may soon have a glut of unused supplies. The United States will be able to perform nearly a billion monthly tests by June, according to projections by researchers at Arizona State University. That’s more than 25 times the country’s current rate of about 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 expected to decline further as local governments shift staff and resources to vaccines.
“You have to choose your battles here,” said Dr Jeffrey Engel of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “Everyone would agree that if you have a public health nurse, you’re going to use that person for immunization, not testing.”
Some experts say the country needs to double its testing to avoid the outbreaks of coronavirus variants that have taken hold in the UK, South Africa and elsewhere.
“We need to use the tests to continue the downtrend,” said Dr Jonathan Quick of the Rockefeller Foundation, who advised Biden officials. “We have to have it there to catch the surges from the variants.”
Last week, Minnesota began urging families to get tested every two weeks until the end of the school year as more students return to class.
“To protect this progress, we must use all the tools at our disposal,” said Dan Huff, deputy state health commissioner.
But some of the loudest supporters of testing are less worried about the decline in testing. From a public health perspective, the tests are effective if they help find infected people quickly, trace their contacts and isolate them to stop the spread. In most parts of the United States, this has never happened.
During the holiday season, many Americans still had to wait days before receiving test results, rendering them largely unnecessary. This led to testing for fatigue and decreasing interest, said Dr Michael Mina of Harvard University.
“It doesn’t really give you a lot of immediate, rewarding feedback,” Mina said. “So people’s willingness or interest in getting tested starts to wane.”
Still, U.S. test makers continue to ramp up production, with 110 million rapid, at-home tests expected to hit the market next month.
Government officials have long speculated that this growing arsenal of inexpensive 15-minute tests would be used to regularly examine millions of students and teachers while in-person lessons resume. But recent guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not emphasize testing, describing it as an “extra layer” of protection, behind basic measures like masking and social distancing.
Even without strong federal support, education officials say testing programs will be important in building the public confidence needed to fully reopen schools, including in the fall, when cases are expected to rise again.
“Schools have rightly asked themselves the question, ‘Is juice worth squeezing to put in place a great testing effort? Said Mike Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit that advises districts in more than 25 states. “Our message to the school systems we work with is, ‘Yes, you have to object to comprehensive testing because you will need it.’”
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Associated Press writer Brian Melley in Los Angeles and AP data reporter Nicky Forster in New York contributed to this report.
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Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter
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The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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