“This thing where you wait more than three days, sometimes seven days, to get a test, nobody should pay a dollar for that. That’s insane,” Gates said. “And so all these numbers about how much we test, the majority is just complete waste,” he added. “You need to get [the result] back as soon as possible so that somebody can change their behavior, so they’re not infecting other people,” Gates explained. The former director of the CDC Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, also addressed this testing issue earlier this month, noting in a post on LinkedIn: “Tests that take more than 48 hours to come back are of little value.” Why? Getting timely results is a crucial component of effective contract tracing. Without being able to identify positive cases, isolate them, and asking their close contacts to quarantine as well, the virus will continue to spread. The CDC explains the contact tracing process as “identifying people who have an infectious disease (cases) and people who they came in contact with (contacts) and working with them to interrupt disease spread.“ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb This means asking people with COVID-19 to isolate for 10 days after the onset of symptoms, according to new guidelines from the CDC, as well as asking their contacts to quarantine at home for 14 days, the CDC advises. Of course, this only works if test results are returned on a timely basis. RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. The nation’s leading public health experts are also concerned about these delays. Anthony Fauci, MD, called test result delays the biggest flaw in the coronavirus testing process in a recent appearance on CNN. “The time frame from when you get a test to the time you get the result back is sometimes measured in a few days,” Fauci said on July 21. “If that’s the case, it kind of negates the purpose of the contact tracing.” And if you think you could have the virus, check out The Single Most Reliable Sign You Have COVID-19, Research Shows.
