Labs are returning Beaufort Co. COVID-19 tests faster. Here’s what’s changed
South Carolina’s public lab and other private labs are now processing local COVID-19 test results much faster than in early July, Beaufort County health care providers say.
But if the state — and the country — want to change the course of the pandemic, access to accurate 24-hour antigen tests will be key in coming months, providers say.
“It’s going to be critical, especially in flu season,” said Dr. Stephen Larson, owner of Sea Pines Circle Immediate Care Clinic on Hilton Head Island.
Rapid antigen tests are diagnostic tests that can quickly detect fragments of proteins found on or within the coronavirus via nasal swabs.
As state lawmakers call on public health officials to ramp up testing around South Carolina, and the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control says fewer people are seeking tests statewide, here’s where Beaufort County stands after weeks of high case counts and dozens of COVID-19 deaths.
What happened in July?
Turnaround times for tests were painstakingly slow at some labs near the beginning of the month.
At Lowcountry Urgent Care, it took 14 days or longer for the national Quest Diagnostics lab company to deliver results, said Lauryn Smiley, a clinics manager.
At Main Street Medical on Hilton Head Island, practice manager Casey Bateman said LabCorp, a global health diagnostics company, returned test results within four to 14 days.
“It was just insane,” she said. “It was very frustrating for us.”
DHEC’s public lab, meanwhile, was swamped with a deluge of tests as more “pop-up” testing events were scheduled in the Palmetto State, said Beaufort Memorial Hospital’s Ashley Hildreth, corporate director of quality and patient safety officer.
“The reason we slowed down some in July is we really started to focus on community testing as a state,” Hildreth said.
By the end of the month, though, results were being processed faster, providers told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Lowcountry Urgent Care recently switched from Quest to GENETWORx for most tests, Smiley said. That Virginia-based lab has returned results within 72 hours. Smiley’s clinics have also been using Diatherix, a Huntsville, Alabama-based lab. Diatherix’s average turnaround time is 48 to 72 hours, she said.
Larson, of Sea Pines Circle Immediate Care Clinic, said the Tennessee-based PathGroup lab has been returning test results within 36 to 48 hours.
Bateman, of Main Street Medical, said her clinic is now receiving positive diagnostic results from LabCorp within a day. The lab also processes antibody tests in one to three days.
The state lab handled last month’s influx of tests well, Hildreth added. DHEC, facing turnaround times of five to seven days, contracted with other private labs for help processing results, she said.
Laura Renwick, a DHEC spokesperson, in an email wrote that those contracts went to Luxor Scientific, Precision Genetics, Phi Life Sciences and MAKO.
“Contracted labs will only be handling no-cost, community-based testing events. If a testing partner has a static site, they will continue to use their selected lab,” she wrote.
Brian Seal, 51, of St. Helena Island, recently attended a mobile testing clinic at Lady’s Island Middle School. Beaufort Memorial Hospital organized the event alongside DHEC.
He and his two daughters, who all tested negative for the deadly pathogen, got their results within three days.
“The process was very easy. ... It was all very quick,” said Seal, who works remotely for a Detroit-based law firm.
Why have turnaround times improved?
Other than the state’s new contracts, local providers say a number of factors could be contributing to the faster reporting of tests.
More labs might be processing tests now than a month ago, Larson said. For example, look to Lowcountry Urgent Care’s switch from Quest to GENETWORx. At one point, Hildreth added, Quest was so slow with some of Beaufort Memorial Hospital’s tests that the medical center reached out to the company to figure out what was going on.
She said some of their tests had been sent to a Quest facility in Virginia, where there were 40,000 specimens from across the country awaiting results. The hospital, she said, later retested some patients and sent samples to DHEC’s lab instead.
Some labs, she added, have started to use a color-coded system to mark samples as high priority, like those for symptomatic patients and health care workers, making it easier for providers to treat those who are ill.
The majority of labs used for Beaufort County tests did not respond to phone calls seeking comment for this story. LabCorp in a statement said its current turnaround time is one to three days.
Larson, though, pointed out that the public’s demand for tests has seemingly decreased in recent days.
As of Wednesday, the seven-day average of viral COVID-19 tests administered in South Carolina had fallen to roughly 6,091 — the lowest average since July 1, according to an Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette analysis of DHEC data.
Dr. Brannon Traxler, a DHEC physician consultant, during a conference call with reporters Aug. 7 said the agency has “not pinpointed a specific reason” as to why those numbers have dropped.
“We continue to work with all of our partners to provide testing sites,” Traxler said. “We continue to analyze the information to see where it’s most beneficial to add additional testing events.”
But The State newspaper reported on Friday that Joan Duwve, DHEC’s director of public health, said in a statement the decrease in testing reflects a decline in people wanting to get tested across South Carolina.
In Beaufort County, 13,843 viral COVID-19 tests were performed in July, according to newly released DHEC data. In comparison, only 8,414 of those tests were administered in June.
Week to week last month, testing numbers in the county didn’t change much, although the first week of July did account for the most tests in a seven-day period: 3,555, according to DHEC.
More rapid tests coming soon
Bateman, Larson and Dr. Faith Polkey, chief clinical officer at Beaufort Jasper Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, said accurate rapid tests are crucial in coming months.
Larson pointed to Quidel’s new Sophia rapid antigen test, which the company says is as accurate as PCR diagnostic coronavirus tests, which are used at DHEC’s mobile testing clinics.
His practice, Sea Pines Circle Immediate Care Clinic, was scheduled to receive some of those tests by now, Larson said, but the federal government is redirecting them to hot spots elsewhere in the country.
“We are working with BD (medical device company) and Quidel to ensure the most vulnerable populations, such as nursing homes, have access to rapid POC testing,” wrote Kate Migliaccio-Grabill, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson, in an email Thursday.
Adm. Brett Giroir, the White House’s coronavirus testing czar, “has instructed BD and Quidel to prioritize HHS order over any other entity until all CLIA-certified nursing homes have received their device and associated tests,” she wrote.
Bateman, though, added that Main Street Medical will start receiving a rapid test developed by Abbott beginning Aug. 17.
The clinic expects to get 48 of those tests per week this month, she said, and 300 “if not more” in September.
“It’s been a huge delay in getting them,” she said.
