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With federal health officials declaring that it has become a matter of “when, not if,” the virus will spread to and throughout the United States, local institutions throughout the country have begun taking measures in an effort to curtail the coronavirus outbreak.
With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration giving the green light for outside labs to begin COVID-19 testing, Northwell Labs announced it plans to begin testing for the rapidly spreading virus within the next week.
Doctors believe they could manually process upwards of 100 tests daily. Once the labs are automated, health officials said they could potentially conduct thousands of tests each day.
“Once the process is fully automated, we will have the ability to conduct tests within three-to-four hours of receiving samples at the lab, and report the results immediately,” Dwayne Breining, the executive director of laboratory services at Northwell stated. If the virus continues to spread, the ability to have local lab-testing capability is vitally important."
Breining said that over the course of the next month, the lab is working with test manufacturers to make this testing available within Northwell’s hospitals throughout New York City, Long Island and Westchester County, further expanding the health system’s ability to respond to an epidemic.
Those facilities will be doing "rapid molecular testing for the seasonal flu using similar technology."
“With local labs, you can test quicker and get the results quicker,” the doctor added.
.As of March 3, there were 92,329 coronavirus cases reported globally, with 3,137 deaths. In America, there have been 101 confirmed cases and six deaths. Two cases have been confirmed in New York.
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Northwell noted that over the past six weeks, they have already invested more than $5 million on coronavirus preparation, including more than $2 million for lab testing and supplies.
According to Northwell Health officials, the "expanded ability to test patients for COVID-19 will greatly enhance Northwell’s ability to manage patients with potential infection.
However, given the limited testing capacity and the CDC’s current recommendations, patients with milder symptoms who do not require hospitalization will not be tested. Such testing is currently reserved for patients who have had contact with someone infected with the virus, or those who are very sick and will require hospitalization."
The approval comes at a critical time as the CDC and the Department of Health have expanded testing criteria to include travel from other countries - specifically Italy, South Korea and Iran - and others without travel history where individuals are hospitalized with respiratory symptoms with no other explanation.
Previously, samples from 28 New Yorkers were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing, all 28 came back negative.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, that "we are in unchartered territory. We have never before seen a respiratory pathogen that is capable of community transmission, but which can also be contained with the right measures."
"If this was an influenza epidemic, we would have expected to see widespread community transmission across the globe by now, and efforts to slow it down or contain it would not be feasible. But containment of COVID-19 is feasible and must remain the top priority for all countries.
"With early, aggressive measures, countries can stop transmission and save lives he added. "We appreciate that people are debating whether this is a pandemic or not. We are monitoring the situation every moment of every day, and analyzing the data. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: WHO will not hesitate to describe this as a pandemic if that’s what the evidence suggests."
On Monday, March 2, acting on a proposal by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the State Legislature approved a $40 million emergency aid package to help the State Department of Health hire additional staff and equipment to help track and fight the disease. The governor said he planned to sign that bill on Tuesday, and he expected that additional measures may be necessary to help stop the spread of the virus.
“Quarantine is going to have to be done,” Cuomo stated. “All of these things could very well happen.”
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