Hos­pi­tals re­port ‘se­vere short­ages’ of Covid-19 tests, HHS sur­vey finds

The US De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices’ (HHS) Of­fice of In­spec­tor Gen­er­al (OIG) on Mon­day re­leased the re­sults of tele­phone sur­vey of 323 hos­pi­tals across 46 states, the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia and Puer­to Ri­co, find­ing “se­vere short­ages of test­ing sup­plies and ex­tend­ed waits for test re­sults.”

Hos­pi­tals re­port­ed that they were un­able to keep up with COVID-19 test­ing de­mands be­cause they lacked com­plete kits and/or the in­di­vid­ual com­po­nents and sup­plies need­ed to com­plete tests, in­clud­ing nasal swabs, vi­ral trans­fer me­dia and reagents used to de­tect the virus.

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