A12 FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2020 S LATIMES.COM
CORONAVIRUS
labs across the United
States, not the state of Cali-
fornia, get the benefit of all
the ingredients that are
components of the test,”
Gov. Gavin Newsom said
Thursday. “I am surprised
this is not more of the na-
tional conversation. We need
to focus in on these tests.”
The chemicals needed,
known as reagents, are used
to extract genetic material
from a nasal swab sample,
among the first steps in the
testing process. Demand for
reagents has left a key sup-
plier struggling to keep pace
with orders from countries
around the world.
The new information pro-
vides a clearer picture of why
testing shortages continue,
even as state and federal offi-
cials last week insisted there
were sufficient kits. Newsom
said that without the needed
supplies, the “test kits are
like printers, but without
ink.”
In California, only 1,
people had been tested for
the virus in public health
labs as of Wednesday, de-
spite several thousand who
have likely been exposed to
infected patients. Newsom
said the reagent shortage
had contributed to a state
backlog in testing and that
the administration had
“been very aggressive with
the CDC” in demanding
more reagents.
“We have 7,675 tests avail-
able, but not every one of
those tests can be accessed,
because all the ingredients
are not available at all of the
labs,” he said. Up to 200 sam-
ples could be backlogged, he
said.
A spokesman for Qiagen,
a top supplier of the re-
agents, said the pandemic
was “challenging our capac-
ity to supply certain prod-
ucts” and that it would in-
crease production in facili-
ties in Germany, Spain and
Maryland. The company will
also hire additional employ-
ees and adjust staffing to
cover three shifts, working
seven days a week.
The lack of reagents is
only the latest problem to
befall the nation’s bungled
rollout of COVID-19 test kits.
States have grappled with
delays in receiving kits from
the CDC while also strug-
gling to increase staffing and
equipment in labs to keep up
with the growing number of
people falling ill.
“The testing issue contin-
ues to haunt us in many
ways,” L.A. County Public
Health Department Direc-
tor Barbara Ferrer said in a
news briefing Wednesday.
“We are very dependent on
getting reagents from the
CDC. I know both the presi-
dent and the vice president
were assuring us and the
general public that those re-
agents are coming and com-ing quickly.”
“If we don’t get reagents
soon, that will become a
problem for us,” she added.
Nationally, a sharp drop
in tests reported to the CDC
may reflect the ongoing
problems with component
shortages. Daily testing over
the five-day period ending
Tuesday fell from 1,246 to
only eight, according to the
CDC. The figures include
tests from the CDC as well as
public health labs.
The statistics stand in
stark contrast to other fig-
ures from the Trump admin-
istration. The CDC on Mon-
day announced that 78 pub-
lic health labs across the
country had the capacity to
test 75,000 people. Alex Azar,
secretary of the Department
of Health and Human Serv-
ices, told Congress on Tues-
day that national lab capac-
ity could increase to 10,000 to
20,000 tests per day by the
end of this week.
The CDC did not respond
to requests for comment
seeking clarification of the
statistics.The component shortag-
es could also limit the testing
capacity of commercial and
academic labs, even as the
availability of test kits in-
creases, say experts.
“Increased demand for
testing has the potential to
exhaust supplies needed to
perform the testing itself,”
including reagents, plastic
pipette tips and other prod-
ucts, the American Society
for Microbiology said in a
statement.
The testing situation
“gets worse every minute,”
said Marc Lipsitch, a profes-
sor of epidemiology at the
Harvard T.H. Chan School
of Public Health.
Newsom called the
Trump administration’s
claims surrounding test
availability a “communica-
tion challenge.” They’re
“claiming they have tests,
but then you talk to local of-
ficials, who say, ‘Well, we
don’t.’ ” He added that it
“would be very helpful” if the
White House’s coronavirus
task force communicated
that technicality “with more
clarity, so that we, at the lo-
cal level, can do the same for
people trying to access those
tests.”
California officials are
working with private com-
mercial lab partners like
Quest to deal with testing
backlogs.
COVID-19 response is-
sues have trickled to L.A.
County, where health offi-
cials on Wednesday con-
firmed the first coronavirus-
related death and six new
cases, bringing the county’s
total to 28.
County officials are cur-
rently limiting testing much
more than the CDC recom-
mends, due to a lack of avail-
able tests. The CDC says anydoctor can order testing for a
symptomatic patient. But in
an advisory sent to doctors
Wednesday night, L.A.
County officials said they
were “recommending that
lab testing be restricted to
individuals with severe dis-
ease.”
“When widespread com-
munity transmission be-
comes apparent, then test-
ing strategies will be reas-
sessed and possibly re-
vised,” the advisory reads.
The county’s lab had
tested 100 people so far and
the CDC had tested an addi-
tional 27 L.A. County resi-
dents, Ferrer said. One hun-
dred and twenty people have
been tested by the two com-
mercial labs in the county,
she said.
The county lab, which
houses only one testing
machine, can test 30 sam-
ples per day. Two more
machines have been or-
dered, she said. However,
the lab is already running
up to 18 hours per day, and
workers are stretched thin.
“We’ll also face an issue of
getting more employees to
run more tests,” Ferrer said.
Ferrer said Quest and
LabCorp, in addition to the
local public health lab, are
running tests.
The county Department
of Health Services, which
manages public hospitals, is
working to get a lab up and
running that would be able
to collect specimens and
also process the test.
“I do think it’s important
to be able to increase our ca-
pacity when clinically appro-
priate to be able to test
[symptomatic] people,” she
said. “We need to have more
testing capacity. I’m glad
we’re trying to build that ca-
pacity.”In Sacramento County,
the shortage has compli-
cated efforts to test patients
at a nursing facility in the
suburb of Elk Grove, where
an elderly patient died this
week. Peter Beilenson, that
county’s health director,
said Tuesday that the
county has access to only
20 tests per day and is
having to ration those be-
tween possible cases in the
community and medical
professionals who may have
been exposed.
Commercial labs can test
patients with milder symp-
toms, according to county
officials, but many hospitals
are still using only the official
county lab, restricting who
can be tested for the virus.
At hospitals, physicians
say they are increasingly re-
questing COVID-19 testing
in response to community
transmission in California.
Calls for testing are sent up a
chain of command and often
denied, they say, or are
dragged out for up to a week,
as patients return to their
communities.
“The bottom line is that
there’s community trans-
mission. You can’t really use
a travel screen to screen pa-
tients,” said an internal
medicine physician who
works at an L.A. hospital
and was not authorized by
her institution to speak. “We
need to be testing more peo-
ple ... as this grows, what’s
going to happen?
“It’s just tough. I think
this is kind of an unprece-
dented situation here,” she
said.Times staff writers Tony
Barboza, Anita Chabria,
Tom Curwen and Taryn
Luna contributed to this
report.California still lacks key components for testing
A WORKER at the biotech company Qiagen demon-
strates a testing device for infectious diseases.Sascha SchuermannGetty Images[Testing, from A1]
His wife, Jane, told re-
porters in Vermont that he
would return to his work in
the Senate after participa-
ting in a televised debate
with Biden on Sunday,
which has been moved from
Phoenix to Washington,
D.C., because of health con-
cerns about air travel.
In a sign that Biden,
meanwhile, is gearing up for
the general election, he hired
a new campaign manager,
Jennifer O’Malley Dillon,
a veteran Democratic cam-
paign strategist who was
a top campaign aide to
President Obama and man-
aged former Rep. Beto
O’Rourke’s 2020 failed presi-
dential bid.
In a campaign year that
has careened around one
hairpin turn after another,
the coronavirus crisis has
whipsawed the 2020 presi-
dential contest in a way that,
as attention turns to the gen-
eral election, could work to
Democrats’ advantage — at
least for now.
The economic downturn
and international turmoil in-
spired by the pandemic are
posing challenges that
Democrats believe will play
to Biden’s strengths as he of-
fers himself as the steady,
seasoned candidate of expe-
rience. And it dovetails with
his political strategy of por-
traying Trump as a feckless
and ineffective leader.
Biden hit on themes that
Democrats hope to make
major elements of their cam-
paign, lambasting the ad-
ministration for failing to
provide adequate testing for
the virus and for hamstring-
ing the country’s response
by cutting health and re-
search programs.
“By cutting our invest-
ment in global health, this
administration has left us
woefully unprepared for the
exact crisis we now face,”
Biden said. “When I’m presi-
dent, we will be better pre-
pared, respond better and
recover better. We’ll lead
with science. We’ll listen to
the experts. We’ll heed their
advice.”
He added: “The markets
will respond ... to strong,
steady and capable leader-
ship that addresses the root
of the problem, not to efforts
to cover it up.”
The Trump campaign re-
sponded in a statement ac-
cusing Biden of politicizing
the crisis. “President Trump
acted early and decisively
and has put the United
States on stronger footing
than other nations,” the
statement said. “His every
move has been aimed at
keeping Americans safe,
while Joe Biden has sought
to capitalize politically and
stoke citizens’ fears.” The
campaign put out a similar
statement about Sanders.
At first, the impact of the
coronavirus crisis on the
2020 campaign seemed
mostly a matter of forcing
Biden and Sanders — and
even a reluctant president —
to cancel big campaign ral-
lies in keeping with advice of
public health officials that
Americans avoid large
gatherings.
But as the ramifications
of the pandemic have grown
— its rapid spread across the
globe, its unsettling effect on
the U.S. and world econo-
mies, and the vast uncer-
tainty about when and how
it will be checked — it is clear
that the political impact
could be much more far-
reaching.
Times of crisis often re-
dound to the benefit of an in-cumbent president, who can
demonstrate leadership and
flex the muscles of govern-
ment power to help citizens.
This episode, however, is
playing into Trump’s weak-
ness.
A leader more comfort-
able before a cheering crowd
than behind the Resolute
Desk in the Oval Office,
Trump gave a speech about
the pandemic Wednesday
night that seemed stilted,
sent the futures market
plummeting and had to be
followed with multiple state-
ments to clarify and correct
the words televised to mil-
lions of prime-time viewers.
The collapse of the stock
market and the threat of a
recession would be danger-
ous to any incumbent, but
pose a particular risk to
Trump’s reelection because
he has made the strength of
the economy the corner-
stone of his campaign pitch.
As with every episode in
the drama of the Trump ad-
ministration, no one knowshow long this particular po-
litical dynamic will last.
Many more crises and ac-
complishments will come
and go over the eight
months between now and
election day.
The potential good news
for Trump is that the econo-
my could rebound as quickly
as it has tanked if the public
health crisis abates in time.
But in the meantime, few
things matter more than
how Trump is perceived as
handling the crisis.
“When a crisis or a disas-
ter hits, political careers get
made or broken by how the
elected official responds,”
said Whit Ayres, a Republi-
can pollster. “It’s too early at
this stage to be able to evalu-
ate that.”
Other Republicans are
already unnerved by
Trump’s performance, in-
cluding his Wednesday
speech and his visit to the
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, where he
wore a campaign hat.One Trump political ally
at work on his reelection ex-
pressed pessimism about
his prospects, given his
“disastrous” and “flippant”
response to the public
health emergency and the
potential impact of an econ-
omic downturn on swing
voters.
“It’s hard to get a fence-
sitter to accept the chaos
and character flaws without
the benefit of a strong econo-
my and labor market,” the
person said, speaking on
condition of anonymity to
avoid retaliation.
The coronavirus out-
break has exploded just as
Democrats were in the cru-
cial stages of their nominat-
ing contest, which is now all
but certain to be won by Bid-
en. Sanders in a speech
Wednesday all but conceded
defeat, but vowed to contin-
ue on for now, in order to
press Biden on issues he
cares most about.
Sanders’ ability to engi-
neer a breakthrough nowhinges entirely on the Sun-
day debate. The suspension
of big rallies deprives Sand-
ers of a marquee tool for en-
ergizing his followers. For
Biden, the canceling of ral-
lies is not such a blow, as he is
strongest in smaller, one-on-
one encounters.
The crisis atmosphere
probably played some part
in the wave of primary elec-
tion victories that Biden has
scored against Sanders over
the last two weeks. Exit polls
in five states that voted on
Super Tuesday found that
more than half of Demo-
cratic primary voters said
that coronavirus was an im-
portant factor in their vote.
Of those voters, 47% pre-
ferred Biden and 29%
backed Sanders. Other exit
polls show voters, by wide
margins, preferred Biden
over Sanders to handle a cri-
sis.Times staff writer Eli
Stokols in Washington
contributed to this report.Biden criticizes Trump on virus crisis
“WHEN I’M president, we will be better prepared, respond better and recover better,” former Vice President Joe Biden says in Wilming-
ton, Del. “We’ll lead with science.” The Trump campaign responded in a statement accusing Biden of politicizing the coronavirus crisis.Drew AngererGetty Images[Biden,from A1]