2-day turnaround time for some COVID-19 tests
Jeremy M. Lazarus | 8/13/2020, 6 p.m.
Virginia’s state lab is cranking out results from coronavirus tests in two to three days — far faster than private labs across the state where it can take two to three weeks, and sometimes longer, to get results.
As a result of the state lab’s faster turnaround, “we have been able to consistently communicate to those who test positive within 48 hours and to those who test negative within 72 hours,” Dr. Danny Avula, director of the Richmond City and Henrico County health districts, wrote in an email Tuesday to the Free Press.
Dr. Avula provided the information in response to a Free Press query about the availability of test results. The Free Press learned that area hospitals — notably those that are part of the Bon Secours system — are providing COVID-19 test results within two days to patients preparing for surgery or other procedures. That’s far quicker than previously published reports suggested about overwhelmed labs.
Dr. Avula noted that “longer turnaround times” are being experienced with tests at LabCorp, Quest Diagnostics, Mako Medical, NEXT Molecular Analytics and other private firms testing nasal swabs for the virus.
However, “the Richmond City and Henrico health districts are not using these labs at this time,” he stated, and are relying instead on the state Department of Consolidated Laboratory Services.
Earlier in the pandemic, Dr. Avula stated that the Virginia Department of Health and local health districts had teamed with the National Guard on testing, with swabs sent to private labs. “That at times did lead to delays,” he stated.
Still, he noted, the “situation is incredibly fluid because it is dependent on testing volume.”
“When cases were surging throughout the Southern states a few weeks ago, this led to huge delays in turnaround time in the large national labs,” he stated.
Dr. Avula added that hospital systems like Bon Secours can have fast turnaround times as they have reserved their limited lab capacity for patients preparing for operations and is not offering testing to the general public.
