South Shore Health Restricts Coronavirus Testing

WEYMOUTH, MA — South Shore Health announced that its affiliated hospitals and medical centers will only conduct coronavirus tests on patients requiring admission to the hospital or at high risk, or healthcare workers who become symptomatic after being in contact with a positive patient. South Shore Health said requirement applies to both the state Department of Public Health tests and vendor tests, and is due to the scarcity of tests in the state.

"The shortage of test kits is a serious problem across Massachusetts," South Shore Health said in a statement.

South Shore Health said that a coronavirus patient cleared for discharge following screening and evaluation should still quarantine at home until testing is more widely available.

"We thank the public for its understanding and adjustment to these rapid changes in testing protocols as we work to manage the spread of COVID-19 and protect the safety of our staff and the public," South Shore Health said.

South Shore Health has been constructing tents designed to provide drive-through testing at Union Point, but those are not yet operational.

Gov. Charlie Baker expects an "enormous increase" in testing for the new coronavirus by next weekend, a sorely needed step that would almost certainly reveal a dramatic increase in positive COVID-19 tests. Baker said the state's goal is conducting at least 3,500 tests per day. The state has conducted 1,743 as of Wednesday morning.

Quest Diagnostics CEO Steve Rusckowski said he hopes his company can test between 2,000-3,000 people in Massachusetts, while upping national testing in its Marlborough lab to 20,000.

"We believe that over the course of the next several days and weeks there will be an enormous increase in the amount of testing that takes place on a daily basis here in the commonwealth of Massachusetts," Baker said. "It can't happen fast enough but I do believe that with the pivots and the adjustments that are being made by organizations like Quest here in Marlborough and by many of our hospital partners and by the state lab and other organizations, we will get to the point where we're doing the amount of testing every day that we believe that we need to be doing."

The lack of testing is a large part of the reason officials expect the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S., including the 256 in Massachusetts as of Wednesday, to increase dramatically.

(Patch Staff Writer Mike Carragi contributed to this report.)