On Thursday night, thousands of vials of New Yorkers' spit, mucus, and cough phlegm arrived at private laboratories. The vials were primed to answer one question: How many of these people have the novel coronavirus?
"We did 10,000 tests last night," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday. "New York has been very aggressive about increasing our number of tests."
A large portion of those swab tests are being performed at seven drive-through testing sites in New York that have been set up by lab company BioReference Laboratories.
"We contracted with New York state to provide the testing for all of their drive-thrus," BioReference Executive Chairman Dr. Jon Cohen told Business Insider. "We have, I guess, some sort of expertise and a playbook about how you do this."
Because of its aggressive testing rollout, New York has diagnosed more than 7,100 cases of the novel coronavirus in the state, a much higher number of confirmed cases than anywhere else in the country, and near half of all US diagnoses to date. In Washington state, where the second highest number of coronavirus cases has been confirmed, labs have tallied fewer than 1,500 cases.
New York is now far ahead any other state in the nation when it comes to testing for COVID-19, and the state's strategy relies heavily on private testing from places like BioReference lab and Northwell Health, and state public labs like the Wadsworth Center. All in all, 28 labs are on deck for New York's coronavirus testing.
Much of the testing backup across the rest of the country originated in February and early March when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 test rollout to state public health laboratories was delayed because of faulty test ingredients that took weeks to be tossed out from test kits.
"That happens not infrequently when you're doing testing that's this complex," Dr. Dwayne Breining, Executive Director of Northwell Health Labs, previously told Business Insider today about the CDC's test kit problems.
There's no accurate way to track where coronavirus cases are spreading across the US right now
The outbreak those public health tests were originally designed to prevent is here, Cohen said.
"You're not going to track this thing," he said of COVID-19 in the US. "That's what the CDC tried to do. They tried to lock down where they thought the [virus] where it was, by tracing everybody and then, you know, didn't happen."
BioReference is now employing a mix and match strategy for its testing, using some CDC-style tests, along with other coronavirus testing kits which have been quickly pushed through US Food and Drug Administration emergency approval processes recently by private manufacturers, including Roche and Thermo Fisher.
The federal testing strategy, which has relied heavily on sending samples from across the country to the CDC's Atlanta labs for testing, has resulted in hundreds, but never thousands of tests per day done by the CDC.
New York is now able to test many more people than the CDC ever could. Cohen says it's like having multiple kinds of cars (ie. test kits) all working toward the same destination (a diagnosis). They might all operate with different "gas in their tank" (the chemicals to make the reactions work), and they might operate at different speeds, based on the machinery (type of RT-PCR machine) they use, "but eventually, they're all going to get to the same place," Cohen said.
In this way, testing capacity has increased exponentially since private testing started.
New York has diagnosed roughly half of the nation's COVID-19 cases, in part because it's done way more testing than anywhere else
Test rationing is still occurring in New York, and not everyone who wants to be tested can get their hands on a kit. Coronavirus tests are prioritized in Cohen's lab based on the source: hospitalized inpatients have priority (as they're likely the most severe cases), then come hospital workers and first responders before everyone else. The waiting period for results from a coronavirus test is an additional day or two from an initial patient swab.
"At some point, it's going to be everybody who's got a little, you know, nasal drip who wants to run to the doctor and get tested," he said.
But having enough supplies on hand to meet demand is a growing concern. The style of swabs used for a coronavirus test are smaller than a bathroom cotton swab, as they've been designed to more easily slide into the nose and throat and grab a patient's RNA-filled viral gunk, which identifies their infection in the lab.
"That is a ongoing concern right now, is to make sure that we get enough swabs," Cohen said.
Then, there are the chemicals needed to run the tests once vials arrive at the lab.
"Right now, I have reagents to run the testing vials that I need to, hopefully the reagent suppliers, chemical suppliers will keep up," he said.
BioReference has promised to run 5,000 tests a day for New York State (Cohen said they're about halfway there), another 5,000 tests for New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and thousands more for other companies and first responders around the country.
"If you wrap all that together, we're 15,000," he said of BioReference's current testing capacity. "We're going to get to 20,000 a day within the next week, if not higher."
Next Story
A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
A centenarian who starts her day with gentle exercise and loves walks shares 5 longevity tips, including staying single 
2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
"To sit and talk in the box...!" Kohli's message to critics as RCB wrecks GT in IPL Match 45
7 Nutritious and flavourful tiffin ideas to pack for school
India's e-commerce market set to skyrocket as the country's digital economy surges to USD 1 Trillion by 2030
Top 5 places to visit near Rishikesh
Indian economy remains in bright spot: Ministry of Finance
