COVID-19 Tests
(Photo : Reuters)

Many people living across the country who are suspected to have been experiencing COVID-19 symptoms are not yet tested due to a lack of testing centers.

The United States is one of the countries in the world that has been devastated by the coronavirus. The recorded infected patients who are under investigation and the death toll continues to spike. 

However, the United States remains not to test all people who have been experiencing COVID-19 symptoms in the different states according to a recent article. There are only around 4,384 individuals nationwide who were tested as of Monday but this data somehow inconsistent.

It was found out that there are only a few patients who were tested compared to persons who believed that they are carrying the virus but were not tested due to lack of testing centers or were told by the hospitals that they will not be tested unless they came from a travel in countries with confirmed cases of COVID-19 like China.  

This means that the lack of testing centers across the country for individuals who are suspected to have COVID-19 symptoms may cause a very big problem. Many Americans will continue to suffer from the virus untreated and unmonitored by a hospital. This will also be one of the causes that the virus will be spread.

There are only more than 570 people who were reported infected by the virus according to the local and state announcements across the 36 states in the country. However, experts believed that these numbers are too small to reflect the full extent of the effect of the virus in the country.

It was also confirmed that thousands of Americans have been infected by the virus since the beginning of the month using statistical and genetic techniques. These are the techniques used to estimate the true size of COVID-19 patients. At present, U.S. officials have recorded 26 deaths in the country.

However, in a recent study conducted by Cedars-Sinai that more than 9,000 individuals who have COVID-19 symptoms may have already been affected. This is more than the reported number of COVID-10 cases in the country. 

This reflects the slow pace of the country in responding to the effects brought by COVID-19 compared to other countries. South Korea had tested more than 100,000 people or 15,000 individuals every day while the United Kingdom which has recorded 3 deaths due to COVID-19 has already tested more than 24,900.

Meanwhile, on the website of Centers of Disease and Control prevention, they posted that several 1,707 were tested as of Sunday at the CDC's laboratory. This does not include the bulk of tests conducted by other states and private laboratories. When CDC was asked about the certainty of the figure, they did not give any comments.

Commissioner Stephen Hahn of the Food and Drug Administration that 5,861 specimens are tested at the end of the week. As a rule of thumb, it needs two specimens to be tested from one person. This means that there are around 2,900 people who are tested with the infectious virus.

There are many populous states in the country that did not yet report how many tests they have conducted. In Texas, where there are 34 confirmed cases of COVID-19 patients, did yet post on its website as to how many individuals in the state were tested.

Massachusetts has not also released the total number of individuals tested even though there are 41 presumptive cases in the state even Nevada which has 10 presumptive cases. An official from Pennsylvania told the reporters that they could only test a dozen every day even though the state has a possible high rate of the virus.

This suggests that there are many unreported positive cases of COVID-19 patients due to the lack and availability of testing centers in the country.