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A new immunity test from Stanford University and an increased focus on screening for coronavirus will help the state dramatically ramp up testing over the next few weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday, with an ultimate goal of getting Californians back to work.
“The testing space has been challenging for us, and I own that,” Newsom said during a news conference. “I have a responsibility as your governor to do more and to better.”
Newsom has been promising increased testing for weeks, but dwindling equipment and long wait-times for results have hampered that effort. The state has tested 126,700 people, which Newsom says is “inadequate.”
The Stanford blood test is just “hours” away from federal approval and could allow people to begin to return to work, Newsom said. The tests are “serological,” and could determine whether someone has developed antibodies to the coronavirus. In theory, those who develop immunity may be able to safely interact with others without catching or spreading it.
The Stanford test is different from others in that it detects only antibodies, unlike point-of-contact testing using RNA from the respiratory system, which can detect an active infection. It is believed that certain antibodies could prove immunity, according to researchers in Italy who are beginning to test areas hard-hit by the virus.
It’s unclear the timeline for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, even as regulators on March 16 amended their policies for so-called emergency-use authorization.
The test will begin to be used on Californians in the coming week, said Dr. Charity Dean, assistant director at the California Department of Public Health.
“We’re very excited that this is a California homegrown test,” she said during the news conference.
The state is also trying dramatically to ramp up more traditional testing to determine who is infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 respiratory disease.
“I want everyone tested who needs to be tested,” Newsom said.
That will include expanding community surveillance testing of people without symptoms to determine how many people are unknowingly spreading the virus and speeding up test results, Newsom said.
Dean is co-chairing a new state task force with Blue Shield of California CEO Paul Markovich that aims to increase testing five-fold over the next few weeks, Newsom said.
The task force comprises more than 50 people, said Markovich, many of whom are private sector workers donating their time. Markovich himself said he’s cleared his schedule and is now spending about 70 percent of his time volunteering on the task force, which is advising Newsom and helping coordinate supplies needed to run the tests. He said he anticipates the task force will take up the majority of his time for the next few months.
The increased number of people working on the issue will allow the state to follow through on Newsom promise in a way it couldn’t before, Markovich said.
“The biggest difference is that there’s a much larger staff,” he told The Sacramento Bee. “There’s just a lot of intense logistics that has to happen, data gathering, data collection, to make sure we’re getting the right supplies to the right place.”
In the meantime, the state has dramatically reduced its testing backlog. Only 13,000 of the nearly 127,000 tests conducted are still pending, Newsom said Saturday, a stark reduction from Friday’s figure of nearly 60,000 from the California Department of Public Health.
“A lot of that has to do with the commercial labs stepping up,” Newsom said.
The backlog grew as labs became overwhelmed by escalating demands and shortages of test swabs, chemicals and personal protective equipment for workers collecting samples and running tests, Newsom said.
Experts say the delays in testing make it difficult to track where the disease is hitting hardest, and in turn, allocate medical staff and resources where they are needed most.
Hospital officials statewide are working with Abbott Laboratories to increase point-of-care tests, which can take 15 minutes or less to produce a result, at 75 sites among the state’s 13 major hospital systems including Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, Newsom said. The state also has new partnerships with UC Davis and UC San Diego to create new testing “hubs,” he said.
