Letter to Dr. Robert Redfield, Director for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention - Sherrill, Menendez, and Pascrell Lead Members Calling on CDC to Establish System for Prioritization of COVID-19 Tests

Letter

Dear Dr. Redfield:

We write today to urge you to establish an official coding or labeling system for the prioritization
of COVID-19 tests. While some diagnostic labs have already established a process for providers
to mark specimens for prioritization, laboratories need an overall standardized process to ensure
COVID-19 tests are a priority. Our hospitals and health care providers are spending precious
time and personal protective equipment (PPE) as they wait several days for COVID-19 testing
results to arrive from commercial laboratories.

As you know, symptomatic patients of unknown status must be treated as COVID-19 positive.
Inpatients of unknown status often spend several days in isolated negative pressure spaces, and
health care staff must continue to wear PPE when interacting with these patients. The inability to
distinguish COVID-19 positive patients from negative patients for days on end is a tremendous
burden on the PPE supply as well as physical space in isolation areas. Supply and space are
dwindling, ultimately putting the health of both patients and providers at risk.

Furthermore, we are now facing a crisis in hospital morgues. If a patient dies before receiving a
result, he/she must remain in the hospital morgue until that result is returned. Our hospitals are
now telling us they will need additional capacity in the morgue as the pandemic continues.

The emergence of testing centers in our state is putting even more pressure on commercial
laboratories, despite their best efforts to increase capacity to keep pace with the pandemic.

Given the insurmountable challenge of laboratory capacity being outpaced by the number of
cases, it is essential to establish a prioritization framework for both our health care providers and
laboratories. The CDC recently established guidance for health care providers and testing
facilities to prioritize who gets tested for COVID-19; while this is a great first step, health care
providers and testing centers still lack a way to communicate to laboratories the priority level of
each sample. There is currently no standardized way for health care providers and testing
centers to label, code, or describe the samples that are sent to commercial laboratories. The
lack of this information prevents commercial laboratories from prioritizing, and compounds the
strain on our local hospitals, healthcare providers, and PPE supply.

We urge you to collaborate with laboratories in establishing a coding or labeling system to
indicate which samples are which priority. Doing so would provide laboratories with a
standardized process to obtain the information they need to process samples according to
priority level.

We look forward to your prompt reply on this very urgent matter.