Nearly a year ago, eager crowds entered Utah hospitals hoping to get tested for coronavirus, while test supplies were so scarce that health officials told Utahns not to ask for a test if not they were extremely ill.
The lack of aggressive and widespread early testing, with a first failed federal test, a regulation that slowed the release of alternatives and other factors, could cost Utah and the nation the chance to curb the virus last spring.
Testing is now back in the spotlight as Utah tests and plots to clear up new outbreaks as cases dwindle and the number of vaccinated residents grows.
Governor Spencer Cox is urging the Utahns to get tested, whether they are sick or not. There are emerging sites for rapid weekly antigen testing in several counties, and at least some hospitals no longer require a doctor’s referral to test for COVID-19. And the state is again trying to get Utahns to sign up to receive phone alerts that will notify users that someone they’ve had contact with has tested positive.
This is what we know about the state’s renewed commitment to testing and what it means to you.
A few months ago it was difficult to get a coronavirus test even through my doctor; there are now rapid antigen testing sites statewide. Who does all these tests?
In early January, the state began offering rapid antigen testing during one- or two-day weekly emerging clinics at dozens of locations around Utah. Most of those tests have been conducted by the Utah Department of Health, in locations that also have Utah National Guard troops, said UDOH spokesman Tom Hudachko.
Other sites have been managed by Nomi Health, the Orem healthcare technology company that operates TestUtah under a contract with the state. Former Gary Herbert first announced that TestUtah would conduct statewide asymptomatic testing starting in September, when rapid testing was available. According to test data obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, TestUtah appears to have performed less than one in 10 coronavirus tests in Utah from September to January.
[Read more: Exclusive: TestUtah’s COVID-19 testing costs the state more than other sites, analysis shows]
Since the pandemic began, about 3.9 million coronavirus tests have been performed in Utah, with approximately 2.2 million people. Most of the testing has been done by health care systems, with approximately 1.1 million at Intermountain Healthcare and more than 400,000 at the University of Utah Health. TestUtah had conducted about 250,000 tests by the end of January and Utah National Guard and UDOH teams had done about 290,000 by mid-February, Hudachko said.
Why is the state now promoting more evidence, just as cases are declining? Should the evidence have been more widespread when cases peaked in November?
The state launched antigen testing sites in January to quickly identify outbreaks after holiday meetings, especially when schools opened, Hudachko said, though he added that testing “has not happened. more or less central to the state’s response. “
“Testing as many people as possible has always been a key strategy and always will be,” he wrote in an email. “… What has changed are the tactics available to achieve this strategy: rapid tests, mobile tests, school tests, community surge tests, and so on.”
When the pandemic began, state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn noted that testing can be more advantageous when there are fewer cases, saying at the time, “The benefit of community-wide surveillance is. .you are able to get an early idea of where the virus is “.
And while testing is always crucial to ensuring that infected people know how to isolate themselves, contact tracking may become less and less practical as more cases are confirmed. As case numbers increased through the fall, some Utah health departments had to reduce contact locating efforts, calling fewer contacts from each infected person and asking patients and employers to try to notify. to other people who might be at risk.
“When a contact tracer receives about five new cases every day or so, it’s very difficult to stay on top,” Salt Lake County epidemiologist Annie George said in October. “It gets to a point where it’s not effective because … it doesn’t do you any good if you call them after they’ve been out of quarantine for a while.”
So is Utah really testing more people now that it offers quick tests to anyone who wants it?
No, but it appears to identify a significantly larger share of infected Utahns.
Coronavirus test figures skyrocketed in late November, as case figures also peaked. The week before Thanksgiving, Utah was testing more than 25,000 people a day, and testing rose to that level in early January as students returned to school after the holidays. winter. In recent weeks, Utah has been averaging about 15,000 tests daily.
However, the percentage of positive tests has decreased sharply since the rapid tests began. The higher this percentage, the more likely it is that many cases will go undetected and that infected Utahns will carry and spread the virus unintentionally.
At the beginning of January, almost a third of all tests were positive; as of Thursday, that figure was down to about 10%, even with thousands less people tested every day.
It is still a long way from the figures showing that evidence has captured enough cases that the virus probably does not spread without being detected in the community. In June, when the positivity rate was around 8%, Dunn said a 3% rate would indicate “that we really have it under control.”
Evidence has increased and decreased alongside the number of cases, and with cases falling in recent weeks, “we have also seen evidence decline,” Hudachko said.
But to prevent community transmission, Cox said, Utahns should not wait for symptoms to appear.
“We want to … really want to emphasize that testing is still the best way to identify positive cases so that people can isolate and stop transmitting the virus to other people,” Cox said in a recent news release. “… Please, please feel free to take the test.”