Now nearly 19 months into the COVID-19 pandemic in Minnesota, the majority of the state’s residents are vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.
Yet with cases rising — mostly among the unvaccinated — and the more infectious delta variant prompting breakthrough cases even among those who have the shots, demand for COVID-19 tests has risen rapidly in recent months. Minnesotans are getting tested as part of routine screening, when they have symptoms of illness, to keep friends and family members safe at gatherings or because they need a negative test to board an airplane or go to school or work.
Amid the high demand, Minnesotans are having more trouble securing rapid tests and are sometimes seeing longer waits for test results than they were over the summer.
Longer waits
The number of COVID-19 tests performed in Minnesota has increased rapidly in recent weeks: the most recent data show a weekly average of 486 tests per 10,000 residents, compared to just over 100 tests per 10,000 residents in early July. In November 2020, just before Thanksgiving, Minnesota reported nearly 790 tests per 10,000 residents.
As demand for tests has increased, some Minnesotans have noticed appointments for tests filling up more quickly at doctors’ offices and pharmacies, and many report waiting longer for test results.
Stephanie Zawistowski’s family has been visiting the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport regularly since February so their two elementary-aged kids, who have been in school and summer programs, can get tested as a precaution. The MSP airport testing site is one of 13 no-cost community testing sites run by Vault Health under contract with the state.
At first, it took Zawistowski’s then-kindergartner an hour to fill the sample tube with spit.
“Now she’s in and out in 10 minutes,” she said.
Emails from Vault say test results should be available within 24 to 48 hours of the sample arriving at the lab, but often, they’re available more quickly. From February until late summer, Zawistowski’s family would usually get tested on Saturday mornings, receive an email that their samples had arrived that evening, and have results by the time they woke up on Sunday. But lately, it’s felt less predictable, and usually takes longer than it did before, though still within the 24 to 48 hour timeframe from the time the tests arrive at the lab to when results are available.
In recent weeks when family members have been tested on Saturday, results often haven’t been available until Monday evening, Zawistowski said. When one child who was home under quarantine developed potential COVID-19 symptoms, the family kept the other child home from school recently on a Monday awaiting test results.
Rena Carlson Rasmussen has noted an increase in test turnaround time, too. She’s been getting tested weekly as a precautionary measure. Though vaccinated, Rasmussen said that as the manager of a coworking space, weekly testing offers peace of mind: “It’s just a part of my regular routine with being around a lot of people,” she said.
In the spring, when Rasmussen got tested at the state’s testing site at Roy Wilkins Auditorium in downtown St. Paul, also run by Vault Health, she would typically get results back the same night. Now, it’s often taking more than a day, she said, between the time she spits in the tube and when she receives an email with her results.
Longer turnaround
Vault has seen some increase in median test processing time in recent weeks, spokesperson Kate Brickman said.
The company measures turnaround time as the time between when the sample arrives at the lab and when results are available. That’s because the company processes both mailed-in tests and tests taken at community testing sites across the state and some in schools.
The median time between test arrival and results for the most recent week was nine hours, Brickman said Monday. That’s down from 12 hours the week prior and up from five to six hours in June and July when test volume was lower. Still, 95 percent of test results take less than 24 hours to come back after they arrive at the lab, Brickman said.
“It’s definitely increased a little bit in terms of turnaround time as demand has doubled and tripled,” Brickman said. “But the test results are still generally taking under 12 hours once they arrive at the lab.”
Brickman said turnaround time is similar to high volume testing times in the spring.
At Sanford Health’s Bemidji location, test results are often taking a bit longer to come back than they used to, too, as test volume rises. Sanford Bemidji has gone from administering around 900 tests in a week to 2,100 recently, and appointments to get tested are filling up quickly, said Amy Magnuson, the director for primary care at the Bemidji site.
The site has switched to exclusively using PCR tests for symptomatic patients, That means the samples need to be sent to a lab, increasing turnaround time, which is now typically between 24 and 48 hours.
“I think we’re still doing pretty good, but it is a little bit longer than what people may have experienced over the last couple months,” Magnuson said.
It’s not just Minnesota where COVID-19 test turnaround time is increasing. As demand for COVID-19 tests has risen, other states are seeing similar increases in time it takes to get results back, per news stories in Montana, Maryland and Maine.
Minnesota Department of Health spokesperson Scott Smith said in an email that Minnesota’s labs — both private and contracted through the state — have the capacity to meet higher testing demand than the state is now seeing.
Currently, labs are processing between 17,000 and 40,000 tests per day — far fewer than the roughly 90,000 processed on the peak processing day. Smith said he hadn’t heard of issues with turnaround time.
Rapid tests scarce
As Minnesotans seek to get tested more often, many are turning to rapid antigen tests. These tests, available at pharmacies for about $12 to $40 each, come back in around 15 minutes. They are typically less accurate than the gold-standard PCR tests done at Vault and other labs, but offer the advantage of a quick result.
Rapid tests are widely available – and sometimes free — in some other countries, but here, supply is falling short of demand, with pharmacies often unable to keep them in stock. As of publication, most local CVS stores and some Walgreens showed them out of stock.
In recent weeks, Minnesotans have been sharing tips on social media when and where the scarce tests become available, and parents especially report frustration finding tests as back-to-school sniffles season starts.
“With elementary school kids, I had to drive all over town last week to find a rapid test for littles,” one Twin Cities parent tweeted.
Testing capacity
Unvaccinated people with COVID-19 exposures are supposed to quarantine for 14 days regardless of test outcome, but getting a result sooner can offer some measure of comfort. For screening testing to be effective in schools, tests should be available within 24 hours, the CDC says.
Zawistowski said she’s glad to have the testing sites available, but said a longer wait time makes it harder for parents to make decisions that ultimately affect their children, and potentially, their communities.
“You can’t test your way out of a pandemic, but it certainly provides you with a lot more information to make better choices, particularly when you are a parent trying to make choices for your kids who are not eligible yet to be vaccinated,” Zawistowski said.“We’re into our third school year in which we’re dealing with the pandemic, and it seems like it’s just gotten harder and not easier and it’s weird to backtrack like that.”
It’s important to note that when talk about vaccine rates, those rates aren’t distributed equally across the state or even the metro area. Wherever there are pockets of unvaccinated people the risk of infection and transmission can be much higher than the 60% over-all vaccination rate might suggest.
Public health officials simply didn’t anticipate vaccine resistance on this scale, it’s never been witnessed before. Likewise resistance to basic mitigation like masking and isolation has been unprecedented. We’re having spikes and waves of infection that simply would not have occurred were it not for this resistance.
Based on previous experience and modeling everyone started scaling back testing capacity because it was assumed that we’d have reached a herd immunity, even with the new variant, buy late July. Furthermore, contact tracing never produced the promised results in terms of magnitude, that only would have worked in a scenario of declining and limited transmission.
I think at this point the best policy decision would be to make unvaccinated people pay for their own testing. The vaccine is free, safe, and effective, if you refuse that OK, but why should someone else shoulder the cost of that personal decision?
Why, for the simple reason to identify shedders so they quarantine by removing an excuse to skip testing. The testing is to protect others.
Of course will they follow the rules?
Sorry that is a dumb question
The problem is the mixed messages that are being sent. I remarked the other day, that with all the Covid scare on the local TV news, why aren’t the number of testing sites open as before? We have the media sounding the alarm that the ICUs are filling up at the same time that the football stadiums are filling up.
I had a family lunch at my house the other day. Ten of the 12 people there were your typical liberal democrats (we’re Sioux Indians), the type who had stayed indoors throughout most of the pandemic and wore a mask while alone in the car … that type. They were hugging each other hello and goodbye (insisted on hugging, actually) and through 3 hours of lively conversation, Covid never came up. I just saw Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi on the news. In one shot they’re wearing masks and in the next shot with people all around them … maskless. Like those at my luncheon, people stop paying attention after a while.
There aren’t mixes messages coming from those who understand Covid. ICUs are full. Hospitals are rationing care. People are being turned away. The fact that people are going to football games doesn’t make all of that true.
Neither does getting together with family and friends, even if they are liberals. Native communities have been hit especially hard by Covid. I hope everyone there was vaccinates at least.
So why would the millions of people who have natural immunity from having COViD, have to pay for testing? They are not vaccinated but have 13x the antibodies and protection (Israel study) as the vaccinated. I was told by folks here at Minnpost that CDC, NIH and other organizations that live off study funding, didn’t do the study because Israel already did it. Fine, then let’s use Israel’s conclusion that natural immunity is better than vaccine.
One size fits all Big Government dictates do not work with health issues. Everybody is different and we do not need the Government deciding who has to do what, health wise. Punishing people, who have had COViD and therefore have natural immunity, for not getting vaccine is silly.
Because “natural immunity” degrades over time and people who have it can still get and spread Covid. Everything you have said is based on a complete misunderstanding of how Covid and infectious diseases work. There is nothing silly about it.
The longer people resist getting vaccines, the longer Covid sticks around. Vaccines are safe and effective, and not getting them just means more economic harm, more jobs lost and businesses closed, more kids out of school, and more people dead and left with permanent damage.
I realize that Republicans embraced a guy who was failure at everything he did his entire life. A guy who failed in business after business with his dad’s money. But at some point, won’t they get tired of failure? Don’t they want this to be over?
This is correct. The CDC actually has data now showing how important it is to get vaccinated even if you have “naturally immunity” from having already been infected – https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-protection.html
Except for the schools and teachers unions, everybody has moved on from Covid. Look around, no masks, no social distancing, no contract tracing, etc.
The hospitals haven’t moved on.
We’re all still masking and social distancing where I work (for which I am grateful), and it is neither a school nor a teachers union.
If folks would just read the conclusion of the Israel study, they can get information from a study of 2.5 million people. The CDC has not done a study on natural immunity versus vaccine, why not? In the conclusion of the Israel study it states natural immunity is stronger than vaccine, lasts longer than vaccine.
You have to learn to read past headlines, Joe:
“The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital
The conclusion of the Israel study is literally that people should get vaccinated. No one but crackpots is saying otherwise.
Any attempt to process scientific literature requires a certain skill set. Anyone who just “reads” the Israeli study and ends up with Mr. Smiths conclusion simply does not possess that skill set.
Thousands of studies all over the world (including the CDC) have in fact looked “natural” immunity and concluded that vaccine immunity is stronger and more reliable than infection derived immunity. A little over a month ago a meta-analysis of over a hundred such studies looking at every vaccine currently available in the world confirmed this fact. The Israeli study does not contradict this. If the Israelis didn’t think the vaccine is effective why would they be the first country to push so hard for booster shots?
Has anyone provided a cite for this fabled “Israeli study”?
The Israeli study is real. Mr. Smith (or wherever he gets his information) does not understand the study or is misrepresenting it.
Looks like Mr. Snyder found one link above.
Yeah. The Israeli study has been happily misinterpreted by those who are in denial of reality. To be fair, whoever thought to lead the headlines of the study with the fact that people who were naturally infected had better immunity was absolutely foolish (or irresponsibly in it for the clicks). Because that’s kind of like saying, people who dive headfirst into shallow pools and survive are much less likely to do so again (because they either learned their lesson or they’re paralyzed, or both). That is, you have to get COVID-19 and RECOVER before you earn your place among the relatively immune without vaccination. And, while most 1st world countries have sick leave and hospital care for all their citizens, in the US, we don’t. And when 1 in 500 people DIE before a hospital bill (or a mortgage or an electric bill, if you’re out a paycheck while you’re busy dying) comes due, that’s actually not good odds. And we’re not done with the dying in this country, yet. Not only does immunity wane, but unless you got sick enough to have symptoms in the first place, there’s no efficient (or cost effective) way to find out if you’re immune without a vaccine. And if you did get just a little sick or not sick at all, there’s evidence to suggest that your immune system is more forgetful than if you got full-blown knock down COVID-19. That doesn’t mean you have no protection, but it also suggests that you can’t rely on infection-acquired immunity for the best protection unless you actually had to struggle to survive it the first time. AND, as others have pointed out, infection-acquired immunity + vaccination is better than infection-acquired immunity alone because they produce complementary protection that neither can do alone. And since you’re less likely to die if you’re vaccinated before you get infected, it’s very much the better route than the other way around.
Yeah, you’ll notice I don’t bother to provide links or other studies because if someone is still making these kinds of garbage claims after almost two years of pandemic information they’re immune to education. What’s the point in giving them links to studies they won’t read or will just misinterpret. And clearly it’s dishonest to claim that you’ve read the actual paper when you’ve obviously just read someone else’s garbage conclusion or misinterpretation or summary.
What’s really weird is the fact that deniers or whatever work so much harder to be misinformed and ignorant the rest of us. If you care about this subject you don’t even have to look for reliable information, all you have to do is listen, watch, or read the news. The BBC had a really nice interview last week with one of the Israeli researchers on that team, I just happened to hear it because I listen to the BBC sometimes when I walk my dog around Lake of Isles. You have to work much much harder to find this garbage and these people do this thinking that it proves to somebody how much smarter they are than the sheeple? And it’s not funny because this BS is getting people killed, it’s actually getting people killed. And every day these idiots prolong the pandemic, is another day some even more bizarre variant could emerge and take hold somewhere in the world. Whatever.