Here's How CT Plans To Ramp Up Coronavirus Testing

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont announced the state is on track to significantly ramp up its testing capacity in the coming weeks and will likely meet the goal of 42,000 tests per week by May 20.

A couple of weeks ago there were about 18,000 administered tests per week and the state is currently performing around 29,000 tests per week. Lamont expects that more than 100,000 tests per week will be administered by the end of June. As of Tuesday Connecticut has performed about 138,000 tests since the pandemic began.

“This is going to give you the confidence that we have this virus more or less under control, at least we can see what is going on there… testing is a bridge to the vaccine,” he said.

The significant ramp-up came from the state working with Yale New Haven Health and Jackson Laboratory. YNNH has plenty of capacity to perform tests, but the system had difficulty obtaining items like reagents and swabs, said Marna Borgstrom, CEO and president of YNNH.

Lamont’s office helped solve some supply chain bottlenecks. YNNH will be able to perform 5,000 tests per day by the end of May and expects to perform 10,000 tests per day in June and 20,000 per day later in the summer, Borgstrom said.

“This is by no means over but there is a lot of great work being done,” she said.

YNNH is also conducting several studies into a potential saliva coronavirus test and hopes to conduct a trial by the summer to prove whether the saliva test is as reliable as the nasal swab test in detecting the virus.

Jackson Labs is looking to scale up from 550 tests per day to 20,000 tests per day by early July.

Jackson Labs Executive Vice President Auro Nair said the lab will turn around test results within 24 hours of receiving a sample.

“Now, because of our partnership with the State of Connecticut, we have the unique opportunity to dramatically increase our testing capacity while ensuring continued 24-hour turnaround time in order to help the State of Connecticut’s most vulnerable populations," Nair said.

Personal Protective Equipment
Connecticut recently received a large shipment of PPE gear that should keep the state in good shape for a couple of months. The order included six million surgical masks, 500,000 protective masks, 100,000 surgical gowns and 100,000 temporal thermometers. The value of the equipment is more than $10 million, said state COO Josh Geballe.

The deal took a lot of negotiation on the state’s part due to a high level of competition for PPE, Geballe said.

The state has delivered more than 15 million pieces of PPE to those in need as of May 11.