03-13-2020, 01:18 PM
You’re right, it’s not much testing, but Hawaii isn’t the only state with such poor availability:
But the majority of Americans still cannot get tested, as interviews with doctors, patients, and dozens of state public-health officials reveal. While the most stringent federal guidelines are gone, a chaotic patchwork of rules now governs who can and cannot get a COVID-19 test. In many states, symptomatic patients still cannot get tested for the coronavirus unless they meet certain limited criteria—even if their doctor wants to test them.
Those criteria mean that the cases most crucial to understanding the spread of the pandemic may never be discovered. In at least 13 states, the rules effectively discourage doctors from testing patients who have no known ties to existing cases—exactly the kind of “community case” that would signal that the pandemic has reached a dangerous new stage in a city or region, and that the virus is now spreading among strangers.
The rules are set by states, counties, and cities, as well as by individual hospitals and health systems. And while many are based on guidelines published by the CDC, their enforcement can vary profoundly on a state-by-state, and even hospital-by-hospital, basis.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...us/607999/
But the majority of Americans still cannot get tested, as interviews with doctors, patients, and dozens of state public-health officials reveal. While the most stringent federal guidelines are gone, a chaotic patchwork of rules now governs who can and cannot get a COVID-19 test. In many states, symptomatic patients still cannot get tested for the coronavirus unless they meet certain limited criteria—even if their doctor wants to test them.
Those criteria mean that the cases most crucial to understanding the spread of the pandemic may never be discovered. In at least 13 states, the rules effectively discourage doctors from testing patients who have no known ties to existing cases—exactly the kind of “community case” that would signal that the pandemic has reached a dangerous new stage in a city or region, and that the virus is now spreading among strangers.
The rules are set by states, counties, and cities, as well as by individual hospitals and health systems. And while many are based on guidelines published by the CDC, their enforcement can vary profoundly on a state-by-state, and even hospital-by-hospital, basis.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...us/607999/
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