BUFFALO, N.Y. — At his first coronavirus brief held at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Governor Andrew Cuomo noted the definition of the word 'good' had changed: “Good is now, not terrible.”
That is true about virus testing in Western New York. It has improved.
Monday, Kaleida Health announced it had ramped-up its ability to process tests to the point where it could offer testing to any symptomatic person who has a testing prescription from a doctor.
For weeks local testing was limited, reserved for essential workers like health care workers and law enforcement. But even with Kaleida's reported ability to complete 500 tests a day, the governor says the region and the state need much more.
"We have to do better," Cuomo said. "We have to do more and we need more tests and that’s what we are talking about here.”
Based on conversations the state administration has had with testing manufacturers, these companies face shortages of necessary supplies to produce testing kits and chemical reagents to process samples.
This is even an issue in Kaleida's now continuously operating laboratory in Amherst. It has equipment to run six different versions of COVID-19 virus tests. But it only has supplies to operate three of these tests.
Roswell Park has the same problem, a lack of supplies from testing manufacturers.
“Currently, we maybe have the capacity to do a couple hundred tests a day and we’re only doing 80 to 90 because be just don’t have the reagents,” says Roswell President and CEO Dr. Candace Johnson.
Testing is seen as a key to battling the virus. Re-opening the state's economy will depend on data the governor says. Much of that data is driven by the ability to widely test.
