Coronavirus Patient at UC-Davis Hospital Was Not Tested For Days

I have been telling my family and friends to not panic about coronavirus, but an article published two hours ago in The New York Times has me a bit rattled. NYT reporters Roni Caryn Rabin and Sheri Fink document that a patient in California – later revealed to be in Davis – had to wait days to be tested for coronavirus, even though doctors requested the test. This patient, who has now tested positive, may be the first person in the United States to be infected through community spread, the CDC reported yesterday.

While it is possible that the patient was exposed to a traveler returning from an outbreak zone, the source of the infection is unknown, and may very well be a case of local, community transmission. 

The delay in the patient’s testing – which delayed the diagnosis and thus presumably delayed appropriate containment measures - was due to federal restrictions limiting testing to patients who have recently traveled to China or know they have had contact with someone with coronavirus.

In the midst of criticism of the federal government’s slow response to the epidemic, President Trump named Vice President Mike Pence to coordinate the government’s response, deemphasizing the seriousness of the threat. “The risk to the American people remains very low,” said Mr. Trump. “We have the greatest experts, really in the world, right here.” 

Meanwhile, the actual experts, doctors at the Universtiy of California, Davis Medical Center, considered coronavirus as a possible diagnosis when the patient was first admitted last week, but were unable to obtain appropriate testing procedures because of the stringent restrictions of the federal agency that conducts such testing.

The patient was moved to the medical center from another hospital in Northern California (where??) with a suspected viral infection, and was already in bad shape and using a ventilator upon arrival, UC Davis wrote in a letter yesterday. “Upon admission, our team asked public health officials if this case could be Covid-19,” the letter said. The medical center requested testing from the C.D.C. “Since the patient did not fit the existing C.D.C. criteria for Covid-19, a test was not immediately administered. U.C. Davis Health does not control the testing process.”

Previous to this case, public health officials have traced the source of all the infections in the U.S. to a trip abroad or a known patient. If this patient has had no contact with anyone coming from an affected country, then that means there are already undiagnosed cases of coronavirus in the community, here in Northern California. 

To be honest, I would still recommend to family and friends that they not panic. As has been pointed out repeatedly in class, this virus will certainly make its way through the human population, and the best thing we can do is wash our hands, get enough sleep, and not suppress our immune systems by stressing about it. 

At the same time, my 13-year-old daughter just came downstairs and said “my throat hurt” and my husband teased, “is it coronavirus?” We laughed, but if my daughter did happen to contract a respiratory illness that put her on a ventilator and her doctors suspected coronavirus, I would be furious if she was unable to be tested. 

~~ Amy Allebest
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/health/coronavirus-testing-california.html