more than 3,000 samples per day<\/a>, Gov. Brian Kemp announced earlier this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt Phoebe Putney, hospital staff had been limited until Thursday night to collecting nasal swab samples and sending them to New York-based Quest Diagnostics for testing. Now, the South Georgia hospital has equipment and software in its lab that returns results within a few hours, using a process that checks whether a patient\u2019s swab sample matches COVID-19\u2019s genetic makeup, Kitchen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hospital staff can now send someone home if they test positive more quickly, eliminating the need to use up precious treatment space and employee time, Kitchen said. Positive patients can now also be quickly isolated rather than left in areas where there may be other people who have not yet contracted the virus but are awaiting test results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey would have exposed patients and nurses unknowingly,\u201d Kitchen said. \u201cI think this is a very effective strategy from a hospital standpoint to reduce the transmission.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kitchen said the speedy test is airtight, with a near-perfect accuracy rating for positive cases and a less than 10% chance results will produce any false negatives. It was purchased from Cepheid, a California company, which late last month received U.S. Food and Drug Administration emergency approval to market its rapid testing method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, health experts like Kitchen and Kraft contend the most effective way to curb the spread of coronavirus is for people to isolate themselves from each other, not the increase in testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For her part, Kraft said Friday she considers the public attention paid to diagnostics testing in recent weeks a \u201ccontrived concern\u201d when compared to the need for mass social distancing practices. Even with slow turnaround times, Kraft said test results for the brand new virus are still coming in very fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are doing the best we can with diagnostic testing in general,\u201d Kraft said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Friday afternoon, Phoebe Putney\u2019s hospital campuses were treating 78 people infected with coronavirus. Hundreds of people have poured into the hospital in recent weeks, and 36 have died from the virus. More than 1,300 test results were still pending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The influx of patients has stretched the hospital\u2019s staff to the max, Kitchen said. But they have risen to the occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be honest, I can\u2019t say enough about how they\u2019ve responded to an extraordinarily difficult challenge of meeting the needs of these patients,\u201d Kitchen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd knowing that they\u2019re putting themselves at some increased risk,\u201d he added. \u201cIt is really inspiring to watch how they\u2019re responding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Testing for coronavirus is poised for a big boost in some Georgia hospitals that have begun shifting to in-house rapid tests able to dramatically reduce the turnaround time for results. Staff at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, which has been hit hard by the virus, brought a new diagnostic test online Thursday night that returns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":14294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}