State health officer says Alabama still ‘not very close’ to having enough testing - AL.com

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As Alabama has seen more than 200 new cases of coronavirus each day this month, State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris on Monday said the state still lacked sufficient tests to identify and isolate enough carriers to slow the spread.

He said, ideally, people need to be able to get tested and get the results while visiting their doctor or an urgent care clinic.

“We're not very close,” Harris said. “Point-of-care testing is available in some places, but the point-of-care devices have only been available in this country for less than a month.”

Harris said Alabama did receive a limited number of rapid test machines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services but is still struggling to get test kits that go with the machines.

“The machines themselves are not really the issue, it's the test kits that go with those machines. And those are just not widely available yet.”

Alabama has seen its number of new coronavirus cases increase each day in May, even as calls to reopen businesses around the state grow louder. But Harris said the state only has two methods for slowing the spread, testing and social distancing.

Harris, speaking at the state’s Unified Command for COVID response in the RSA Tower in Montgomery on Monday, said that while the state can test many more people per day than it could a month ago, it still has still a long way to go.

“Until we have a vaccine or until we have some kind of effective treatment, there’s really only two tools in our toolbox in public health,” Harris told AL.com. “We can test people and isolate them if we find them, and we can encourage people to social distance.

“We really don't have any other effective strategies. Now, those can be really effective strategies if you can implement them, but there's certainly, you know, a call for things to get opened back up, to reduce these social distancing limitations that we've had, and so we've got to really be certain that our testing and contact tracing capacity is up to speed.”

Harris said that in order to properly assess and reduce the spread of the virus, testing needs to be available in many more places.

“What we really need for it to be is routine testing available at the place where people go to get care, that's when we'll really have a handle on testing,” Harris said. “Once we have point-of-care testing available in clinics in emergency departments and urgent cares and community health centers, that's when people can just go to their regular health care provider that provider says ‘you need the test, we'll do it here, it will be done in 15 minutes.’ That's when we will really be at the level we want to be at.”

Hospitals holding up for now

Eight weeks after the first confirmed COVID case in Alabama, Harris said the state’s goals in containing the virus remain the same.

“Our goals all along have been, number one, reduce the number of new cases, and by extension reduce the number of deaths we see,” Harris said. “And also, flatten the curve so that the cases we do see don't overwhelm the capacity of our healthcare system.

“We feel that we’ve managed the second one pretty well at this point. Hospitals have been able to take care of all the cases they've had, but we still continue to see lots of new cases.”

New hotspots emerge

Mobile County has surpassed Jefferson County for most total positive cases in Alabama, despite having a smaller population, and running far fewer tests.

“In Mobile, we really have concerns about the rate at which cases are doubling there,” Harris said. “I think we feel like we're going to be seeing cases there for some time and as they ramp up testing we're certainly going to pick up more cases.

“Their hospitals are doing okay and handling the cases that they see within the four walls of the hospitals, but they have really, the highest numbers at the moment there in that county.”

As of Monday night, Mobile County had detected 1,222 cases of coronavirus out of 8,912 people tested. Jefferson County had detected 992 cases while running 16,960 tests. Mobile County’s population is about 413,000, while Jefferson County’s is roughly 659,000. Mobile County has also seen 66 deaths from COVID-19, the most in the state.

“They were a little bit later [in Mobile] than some parts of the state in getting testing up and going,” Harris said. “And so now that we're looking there, we're finding quite a bit.”

In addition, Harris said a poultry plant Marshall County and nursing homes around the state had sparked outbreaks.

In the case of the poultry plant, Harris said the ADPH had collaborated with the business owners to test the employees and develop procedures to minimize the risk of transmission. He said the infections among plant workers may have been spread on the commute rather than inside the building.

“The business actually had a good plan in place and was doing a good job,” Harris said. “But they had a number of people who were traveling from the same area together to work and somebody got infected and so it was very easy for others to get infected and just because of the nature of traveling.

“When you have people in close proximity working together in a plant like that even with your best precautions, it's easy for disease to get transmitted.”

Harris said the nursing home outbreaks have continued to pop up around the state.

“People in skilled nursing facilities are the most vulnerable group of people there are,” he said. “And so when you see one, you oftentimes expect you're going to see more. We've had a number of outbreaks associated with those facilities, and even involving the staff of those facilities and even if your staff are younger and healthier and do okay, they have the potential to infect other people they're caring for, but also then they're out of work for a while.

“Some of our nursing facilities have had trouble just having adequate numbers of staff to work because they have enough people sidelined with the illness.”

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State health officer says Alabama still ‘not very close’ to having enough testing - AL.com
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