“You’ve got to have testing in order to have contact tracing,” said Ted Long, executive director of NYC Test & Trace Corps. “Moving forward we’re going to watch like a hawk the turnaround times for each of the individual labs to figure out what we need to do to improve the turnaround times overall for the city.”
Pooled Testing
Taking advantage of available testing methods is a crucial strategy in containing the virus’ spread, said Lorna Thorpe, professor and director of the Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone.
For one, the city’s current infection rate of approximately 1%-to-2% is within the threshold for pooled testing, which is most effective in areas with very low infection rates. The strategy combines multiple tests together in a single batch. If the pool comes back negative every person in that pool is considered cleared. If the pool is positive, each sample will need to be tested individually.
“Pooled testing is critically important to have in New York City,” Thorpe said. “To have the ability to do it, and to have the systems well designed to do it so that we can increase our testing capacity in particular populations as needed to be on top of the spread of the virus.”
Quest Diagnostics Inc. was the first lab to gain emergency authorization for pooled testing this month. Laboratory Corp of America Holdings was approved for emergency use shortly after.
Mass use of point-of-care rapid tests will also prove useful in containing the virus. The tests which can be processed on site without needing to be sent to a lab can yield results within 15 minutes. However, scaling production to meet the needs of a pandemic have been difficult and so far unsuccessful.
“Ensuring that testing is widely available, making testing available and accessible to the groups that are at higher risk for infection,” and having a vigorous contact-tracing program are all crucial to avoid a new surge of the virus, Thorpe said.
As the city moves into fall and winter, the public needs to acknowledge that in order to keep infection rates low, New Yorkers all need to accept that life has entered a new normal and keep protections like masks, and social distancing in mind.
It is “highly unlikely” New York City will go through another lock down, according to Jha. “The level of mismanagement that you would need to have a city-wide lockdown like what happened in March is pretty substantial,” Jha said. But he added that it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
While low case counts and improved testing capacity give New York a leg up in combating a potential second wave, residents must stay vigilant and not put their guard down or they could lose that advantage, according to Jha.
“The most important thing is to not squander that by letting up too much and relaxing too much over the next couple of months,” Jha said. “You don’t want to go into the fall with rising infections.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.