![]() Jay Inslee’s March 10 order slashing visits to care facilities was a small piece of the sweeping restrictions imposed since the disease broke out. She encouraged other public health managers to demand centers screen visitors and staff for the virus and limit visitors. Watching as the outbreak killed and infected dozens of residents and workers at Kirkland’s Life Care Center, health officials realized how devastating the disease can be in long-term care facilities, Lofy said. Moves by state authorities, she said, mean the tests should be free to patients. Lofy said she has been told providers are setting up drive-thru testing sites, which they are just starting to deploy. Testing capacity has expanded rapidly in the region since March 4, when UW Medicine and other nongovernmental labs were allowed to test, State health officer Kathy Lofy said in an interview Friday. There are a lot of great scientific minds working on vaccines and therapies right now.” But, she continued, “I do have hope, and I do think things are going to get better. “It’s quite frustrating,” said Schneider, a 37-year-old scientist working in biotechnology. The research study - which has since been ordered not to provide coronavirus tests - couriered a test kit to her Eastlake neighborhood home the results, delivered March 7, showed she had coronavirus. Schneider and others ultimately signed up for the Seattle Flu Study to get checked for coronavirus. Now a shortage of nasal swabs - plastic sticks topped with a sponge - is forcing clinics to triage testing. Many test kits in the initial batch that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent to Washington state were defective, and federal restrictions prevented nongovernmental labs from attacking the backlog. Since coronavirus’s arrival in the United States in January, tests for the disease have been in short supply. Even those who tested negative for the seasonal flu couldn’t get a coronavirus test. 22 house party, none could get tested for the then-emergent virus. When Elizabeth Schneider and a dozen friends fell ill days after attending a Feb. MORE ABOUT TREATMENT: Meet a Seattle scientist racing toward a coronavirus vaccine I don’t think there’s any way this is going to be as bad as the 1918 flu, which had such a high mortality rate. “It just boggles the mind that this is going on. Van Voorhis, a University of Washington infectious disease specialist. “I lay awake a lot at night, thinking about that,” said Dr. ![]() Researchers who just weeks ago targeted tropical diseases now hunt drugs that can knock down COVID-19. The capacity for testing, hamstrung early in the outbreak by federal missteps, is expanding and drive-thru testing has arrived at UW Medicine's Medical Center Northwest and is in the works elsewhere. Across the region, hospital and laboratory disaster plans have been rewritten in the face of shortages of supplies and staff.
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