Demetre Daskalakis, an assistant commissioner at the Department of Health, said Thursday afternoon that New York City currently has only enough supplies for “about a thousand people” before it runs out.
The city’s letter to senior officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday suggested that the limited number of tests was already undermining the city’s efforts, citing “slowness of federal action”.
Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services, said Friday that the C.D.C. had sent enough tests to public health laboratories across the country for 75,000 people, and that efforts were underway to help the “private sector and hospitals” begin testing for the virus.
A spokesperson for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, Michelle Forman, said that about 72 public health laboratories are currently testing the new coronavirus. “We are not aware of a general shortage of tests,” she said.
Americans are struggling to make sense of conflicting reports from official authorities, including President Trump and members of his own cabinet. Vice President Mike Pence, who previously promised that “any American could be tested,” conceded on Thursday that “we don’t have enough tests today to meet what we expect to be the demand at the future”.
The lack of testing across the country unexpectedly affects nursing homes.
An executive from the American Health Care Association, a trade group representing most of the country’s 15,700 nursing homes, warned that staff members were much more likely to use protective equipment with patients with signs of respiratory disease – even if the public buys masks and China’s supply chain has shrunk.
Nursing homes “across” the country have started to complain about the shortage of masks and gowns, said director David Gifford.