PORTLAND, Ore. — The good news: Jenny Jonak doesn’t have coronavirus.
The bad news: Jonak, who represents one of the few Oregonians tested by a private lab, had to wait six days to find out.
Jonak’s experience provides a rare window into the limited private testing occurring in Oregon as the COVID-19 pandemic closes schools, shutters restaurants and sends the economy stumbling toward recession.
The Oregonian/OregonLive wrote about Jonak last week. The Eugene woman visited her doctor’s office last Tuesday following February travel to Hawaii and Washington, D.C., where she was exposed to people from Asia and Europe.
Jonak had a fever of about 100 degrees that wouldn’t go away for five days.
Physicians at Oak Street Medical decided to test her for coronavirus and gathered samples from Jonak while she waited in her car. The medical group sent the specimens for analysis to Quest Diagnostics, one of the largest commercial labs in America.
The results came back negative Monday, Jonak said.
“I still plan to isolate just in case I do get it later but it’s nice to know for now,” she said in an email.
Jonak accessed the test from a private lab amid a nationwide shortage that is dramatically undercounting the number of infections and making transmission more likely by carriers with only mild symptoms.
Oregon health officials have received a limited supply of tests from the federal government and are rationing those state kits for the sickest residents. Oregon reported that 618 people had been tested through Sunday, with 182 additional people awaiting results.
State officials have said people will eventually be able to get lab results through hospital systems -- which aren’t yet offering wide-scale testing -- or to seek help from doctor’s offices, which can approve tests by commercial labs.
But even physicians have limited access, and they’re supposed to follow state and federal guidelines about who should be tested.
Oak Street Medical, where Jonak got her test approved by physicians, could only submit samples from 20 patients, a representative said last week.
Quest Diagnostics, which ran Jonak’s test, currently has the capacity to analyze results for only about 5,000 people per day nationwide, according to the American Enterprise Institute, which tracks testing capacity.
The full COVID-19 capacity across all labs stands at about 37,000 people per day nationwide, according to the institute. That number is expected to increase in the days and weeks ahead, although it’s not clear how quickly people can expect to receive their results.
Meanwhile, OHSU Hospital, one of the hospitals looking to develop in-house capacity, was thought to be ready to launch lab testing this week. But officials said Monday that likely won’t happen until next week.
This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.