Health

COVID testing takes a dive in Massachusetts

BOSTON — About a week ago, the state Department of Public Health reported a daily tally of almost 116,000 molecular tests for COVID-19. Four days later, the daily count was down to about 16,000 tests. Could this be a sign the Thanksgiving wave of infections is over?

Yes and no, suggests Dr. Mark Poznansky, a researcher at the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“We still will see an uptick in overall cases per day and cases per week in Massachusetts,” he said. “All the Thanksgiving travel that occurred and mixing of people in various different groups around the country would mean that it would initiate a potential increase in the rate of infection that will run its course through the following weeks or months rather than sort of spike the following week or so.”

That’s because those infected at Thanksgiving - the ‘seeds’ of the wave - will now go on to infect others, and so on and so forth. This may be why testing sites seem to be in a bit of a lull.

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CIC Health, which runs five sites in Massachusetts, had same-day appointments available in Newton and Cambridge, where the company charges $80 per test, and waits of 1-to-4 days for testing at state-sponsored, free sites in Lowell, Greenfield and Fall River.

A company spokesperson told Boston 25 News hours will expand at its sites as Christmas approaches.

A quick check of pharmacy testing sites in one area of Metrowest found 1-to-4 day waits at CVS pharmacies. But Walgreens stores in the same area had plenty of appointments available. Poznansky said there’s something else likely driving test site numbers down: the rise in home testing.

“I think that’s an additional variable that we’ll see,” he said. “Maybe state-reported testing will start to decline, but self-testing may increase without the necessary reporting into the state and national systems.”

But should self-testers be reporting positive results? From a public health standpoint, it might be a good idea, said Dr. George Abraham, chief of Medicine at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester.

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“If we know that there is a cluster in a particular area that always calls into question was there some sort of what we call a ‘superspreader’ event, and that would just help us to do better contact tracing,” Abraham said. “So we can alert people who might otherwise not be aware they’ve been exposed.”

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