Spectrum Health officials announced Monday that new COVID-19 testing equipment and additional supplies are making it possible for more people in West Michigan to be tested. With COVID-19 tests having been in limited supply, Spectrum Health officials say it has been a supply and demand issue, with tests having been reserved for those who are very sick and having severe symptoms. That changed on Monday however, when Spectrum Health officials announced a dramatic increase in the number of people who will be eligible to get tested for the coronavirus.
Susan Smith is the senior director of laboratory services at Spectrum Health.
“We’ve opened up the criteria around testing individuals with minor symptoms, like a headache, or sore throat, or fatigue,” Smith said. “Not the chronic symptoms where you had a temperature, or you had shortness of breath, or a chronic cough, we’ve opened it up--in that way, we are including more individual’s in our community for testing.”
So, does more testing mean, we will see another dramatic increase in the number of positive COVID-19 cases in West Michigan? Dr. Adam Caulfield is the technical director of Spectrum Health’s Microbiology Lab and weighs in.
“So up until now we have only been testing those with severe symptoms, so those are the patients who are most likely to test positive in the first place,” Caulfield said. “As we expand testing to additional groups within our local community, we would expect the number of positive cases to somewhat increase, but actually our percent positivity of testing to decrease.”
With new equipment, Spectrum Health also is able to produce more rapid results for hospitalized patients with severe disease or for those scheduled for inpatient surgical procedures.
