How federal snafus slowed testing at a top U.S. hospital

Doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center wanted to test patients who may be infected by the novel coronavirus. First, they had to overcome obstacles that set them back weeks

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia – The lab directors at the University of Virginia Medical Center felt powerless.

In early March, people began arriving with symptoms of COVID-19. One complained of a cough and had just returned from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak erupted. An elderly patient, already on end-of-life care, had a mysterious respiratory infection. Another, struggling to breathe, had come from a nursing home.

Each needed a test for the coronavirus. The hospital had none to offer.

“Testing is so critical,” said Amy Mathers, an infectious disease physician at the hospital and associate director of its clinical laboratory. “Everybody was just hounding me, and I could see how not having in-house testing was getting worse and worse and worse for the patients and the staff.”

Federal authorities had promised for weeks to provide tests for public health labs. They also pledged to quickly approve additional diagnostic tests developed by hospitals and private companies.

UVA’s medical center, part of a top-flight medical school, had banked on those assurances in developing a strategy and backup plans to ensure it could test patients for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. But its efforts were stymied at almost every turn by federal health agencies, the rapid collapse of medical supply chains, and the slow pace of test development by commercial labs and companies. Hospitals in Seattle, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and elsewhere ran into some of the same obstacles.