It took 13 days for Haley Brutus to get the results of the coronavirus test she took in late June at a downtown CVS but only a couple of hours passed between when she saw the result — positive — and when she received a call from a contact tracer.
The caller started telling her how she needed to quarantine for two weeks and asked about her symptoms. But Brutus had been in self-quarantine since hearing she had been exposed at a family wedding. She had tried to get her results sooner, to no avail.
Now, just shy of two weeks later, she learned she was positive.
“I was pretty frustrated,” the 31-year-old Indianapolis woman said. “I waited 13 days for my test results, which at that point were not valid.”
More: What Indiana can learn from states where coronavirus is surging, according to experts
Around the country, people going for coronavirus tests are facing long waits for results due to backlogs in many commercial labs. In Indiana, how long you wait for a test result can depend on where you go to get tested.
Many who have visited CVS sites have reported waiting around two weeks for results, while other sites can give people answers within a few days.
Testing delays can cause tracing delays
The wait can be frustrating not just for those tested but also when it comes to the state’s efforts to slow the virus spread through contact tracing.
The sooner a person knows he or she is infected, the sooner the contact tracer will reach out to anyone he or she might have exposed and encourage them to quarantine and consider getting tested for symptoms.
If days or weeks elapse between testing and the result, some of the infected person’s close contacts may already have gone on to develop the disease and potentially spread it to others.
“If we don’t decrease that turnaround time between testing and results, contact tracing becomes much less effective, which allows for potential spread of disease,” said Thomas Duszynski, director of epidemiology education at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Fairbanks School of Public Health. “The impact is simply going to be we’re going to see more cases.”
Initially Indiana State Department of Health officials said the free Optum testing sites would be able to return results within 48 hours.
However, over the past seven days on average, that time frame has stretched to nearly 60 hours, with some sites taking as long as 80 hours, Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box said Wednesday.
The state is working with a network of Indiana labs to ensure the Optum samples are processed in a timely fashion, she said.
“Having Indiana samples processed by Indiana labs will help speed up the turnaround time for those results,” Box said. “These are external factors that are beyond our control, and we have become skilled at adapting to them.”
About a third of the nearly 586,600 tests performed since the start of the pandemic have been done at Optum or health department sites, she said.
That leaves two thirds, however, that have been done elsewhere, and some labs are taking more than a week or longer to return results.
CVS officials said in an email that they aware of the issue and working to resolve it along with the independent third-party labs that process the samples collected at their drive-thru testing sites.
“The increase in cases of COVID-19 in certain areas of the country is causing extremely high demand for tests across the board,” said Charlie Rice-Minoso, a communications consultant for CVS Health Midwest region in an email. “This has caused backlogs for our lab partners and is delaying their processing of patient samples.”
Currently, he said, it takes six to 10 days for people to receive their results and in some cases it may take even longer.
Quarantine over before test results back
Elkhart County, which has been a hot spot for the coronavirus, has several sites that offer testing. But wait times for results can vary from two days to when the state health department does the test to more than 12 when some commercial labs run it, said Dr. Lydia Mertz, Elkhart County Health Officer.
“Some people are finished with quarantine before their tests get back,” she said. “We do try to do contact tracing at that time, even though it’s late. … Better late than never.”
Health officials encourage those who are symptomatic to act as though they are infected until receiving results to prevent them from passing on the virus. But some fear the prospect of a positive result will not be as persuasive as an actual positive result.
Additional problems can arise
Testing delays also can lead to other problems. Many hospitals now require a patient have a negative test result a few days in advance of elective surgery. In Elkhart some people have had their surgeries canceled as they waited on results, Mertz said.
Delayed test results also obscure her view of how her county is doing. About two weeks ago, the county put in place a mask requirement. Now Mertz would like to know whether it’s had the desired effect, but her most recent data can be as much as 10 days old.
“I want to be able to say I know for sure it’s working,” she said. “I can’t get a very accurate feel on how much better we’re getting. I think people up here want to know how much better we’re doing.”
Earlier this week the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living sent a letter to the National Governors Association, expressing concerns about how long it was taking to get test results.
The letter said that across the country, almost 90% of nursing homes and assisted living facilities were seeing waits of two days or more for test results. About 24% were seeing waits of five days or more.
Such long waits hamper such facilities’ abilities to control the virus under their roof, the letter said, asking governors to speed up lab processing times.
At Wednesday’s press briefing, Box said that the state’s strike teams typically can get results within 48 hours in areas where outbreaks could occur.
But for many in the community, such expediency is hard to come by.
Waiting and wondering
After running a fever off and on for a few days, Robert Cotter, 71, visited a CVS site June 26 because of the estimated two to four days for results. While he waited, he self-quarantined in his room, avoiding his grandchildren.
The next 13 days, while he waited for results, were simply nerve-wracking.
“I just feel exasperated,” Cotter said. “I don’t want people to have to go through what I went through because, again, it was gut-wrenching.”
Like Cotter, Brutus also sequestered herself while she waited for the results of her test. At one point during that period, she did have a sore throat, but she chalked that up to having slept with a fan on her face.
On day eight of waiting, she called CVS, and they said they would expedite her results. Still nothing for another five days.
By the time she got the contact tracer’s call, she said she would notify anyone that she had had contact with.
Having waited a similar period the first time, Brutus took pains not to have a repeat when she decided to make sure she was no longer infected.
A CVS site was out, so at first, she drove half an hour to a walk-in clinic on the north side only to find a long line. Eventually she made an appointment for Thursday at one of the state testing sites.
Abby Brown also decided to head to a state-run site after getting tested on June 29 at a nearby CVS on the northeast side. Brown, 37, and her husband were tested the same day, about six hours apart, in advance of visiting her mother who has cancer.
The couple has been social distancing but just wanted to be sure they were uninfected. Brown went early in the morning and was told there would be a six day wait for results. Her husband went in the evening and was told two to three days. They chose CVS because of the self-administered test.
“My fear was, I was trying to avoid any additional contact,” she said. “We thought if we were doing self-swab, that’s safest.”
With their trip to Virginia looming, a few days later when they still didn’t have results back, they drove out to Greenfield for testing at one of the state sites. Two days later they learned they were both negative.
More than two weeks later, they were still waiting for results from the CVS tests.
IndyStar Pulliam Fellow Madison O'Connor contributed to this report.
Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.
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