In remarks Saturday as part of his near-daily update on California’s progress in combating the global pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom said that the state had tested 126,700 people for the virus but “that the testing space has been a challenging one for us.” The testing backlog peaked at 59,500 awaiting results and caused delays of up to 12 days, but the former number has been reduced to roughly 13,000. Among the takeaways:
• The task force, which the governor referred to once on Saturday as a “working group,” will include people “on the front lines in terms of the data collection, the supply chain, related to the issue of testing.” It won’t focus only on diagnostics and the test itself, but on testing samples as well.
It’s unclear how many people will be on the task force or whether, like other state groups such as the California Blockchain Working Group, it will hold public meetings. But Newsom did announce its two co-chairs: Dr. Charity Dean, assistant director at the California Department of Public Health; and Blue Shield of California President and CEO Paul Markovich.
“And so, we are now in a position where I can confidently say it’s a new day and we are turning the page on our old approach to how we coordinate, how we collaborate, how we organize and how we distribute information to you in the public around the issue of testing,” Newsom said, adding: “All in organizing a new mind frame to at least increase by five-fold the number of daily tests in the state of California over the course of the next few weeks.”
• Dean joined the governor briefly on Saturday to discuss the task force’s mission, which she said will look at improving supply chain and testing issues. The collaboration will be a public-private partnership, she said, “side-by-side.”
Markovich said via telephone during the governor’s remarks that Blue Shield has assembled a temporary workforce of around 30 besides himself to confront these issues. He described himself as optimistic, due in part to “the fact that we are managing to gather the data that we need to, to understand what supplies are available because we know” they’re scarce. In a statement, he said “ ... we need to speed up the turnaround times so we know the full scope of the problem and how to control the risks.”
• California has deployed a new website, covid19supplies.ca.gov, to facilitate medical supply contributions in 13 key areas, either for donation or purchase. Visitors can specify what goods they have available, unit cost and ship date for everything from swabs to N95 respirators to viral testing media.
• The state has also embarked on a new partnership with the University of California campuses at Davis and San Diego to create five to seven hubs with “high throughput” where the state can work with vendors “to significantly increase our testing capacity and our collaborative spirit,” Newsom said, describing the hubs as being sited around the state.
“This will allow us, again, with the hubs, more throughput testing, much closer collaboration, more data collection in real time, not just positives but negatives,” Newsom said.
• A new, quicker coronavirus blood test from Stanford researchers that can yield results in 5 to 15 minutes is on the cusp of obtaining federal Food and Drug Administration approval, Newsom said Saturday, reiterating that in his daily remarks Monday. On Monday, in response to a question on antibody tests, the governor called testing the “predicate” to the state’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
