NEWS
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2020
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A7
Heppner hospital receives rapid COVID-19 testing kits
reagents to break open
viruses to expose their viral
genome and determining
whether patients are cur-
rently infected.
“It’s unfortunate it’s
taken this long,” she said.
“We are incredibly thankful
for the dedicated clinicians
in our communities who
were patient with this pro-
cess and demonstrated their
ability to provide excellent
health care despite the scar-
city of diagnostic testing.”
She praised Oregon law-
makers — Sen. Ron Wyden
and Rep. Greg Walden
— and the Oregon Pub-
lic Health Lab as allies in
the push to obtain testing
reagents.
“Interpath is basically
ready to go with the test
equipment and is really
blocked by the supply chain
issue, getting the reagents
and supplies to perform the
test,” said Wyden last week
by phone. “Rural Oregon
is 3,000 miles away from
Washington, D.C., and D.C.
might as well be Mars. My
job is to shorten the distance
and help rural Eastern Ore-
gon cut through the red tape.
I just don’t want rural Ore-
gon to become a sacrifi ce
zone when you’re looking at
issues like testing.”
Kennedy said progress
toward doing in-house test-
ing has been deliberate and
painstaking. Some of the
national labs touted an abil-
ity to do more tests than they
could pull off in the time
required to be diagnostically
helpful, she said.
“The last thing we want
to do is create something
that is misinterpreted,”
she said. “We want to give
our providers accurate
expectations.”
One reason labs got
caught fl at-footed is because
they must run so close to
the margin. Kennedy said
Medicare’s
reimburse-
ment reductions in the last
three years mean labs must
watch costs and aren’t able
to keep large stockpiles of
supplies to meet a crisis like
By KATHY ANEY AND ALEX CASTLE
STAFF WRITERS
Politicians and health
experts puzzling about how
and when to restart the econ-
omy acknowledge a huge
blind spot in data.
They really don’t know
how many people corona-
virus has touched because
only the sickest of the sick
are being tested. That has to
change, they say.
What’s becoming clear is
that the disease often goes
into stealth mode and many
with COVID-19 remain
symptom-free. Consider the
ongoing testing of 4,800
sailors on the aircraft carrier
Theodore Roosevelt. About
60% of 600 testing positive
so far were asymptomatic.
According to the Uma-
tilla County Public Health
Department, 24 residents
have tested positive out of
the 481 tests conducted in
the county since March 2.
While data collected by
the Associated Press esti-
mates roughly 3.4 million
people have been tested in
the U.S. at a rate of about
10.46 tests per 1,000 people,
Umatilla County residents
have been tested at a rate of
about 6.16 per 1,000 people.
According to state data,
Morrow County has fi ve
confi rmed cases out of 58
total tests run, which is good
for a testing rate less than
half the national average at
5.0 per 1,000 people.
Umatilla County then
kicked out a “trend map”
on April 14, which shows
the most cases in the county
are located in the Hermis-
ton-Umatilla area. But Uma-
tilla County Public Health
Director Joe Fiumara said
it’s hard to say how accu-
rately it represents the nature
of the local outbreak.
“This doesn’t mean
there’s more of the virus
in the Hermiston-Uma-
tilla area,” he said. “Testing
hasn’t been equitable across
the county for a variety of
reasons.”
Only by increasing test-
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Interpath Laboratory lead technologist MacKenzie Bellah, right, inserts vials into a carrier
for testing as technical assistant Bodie Wood looks on. The laboratory will begin testing
coronavirus samples on May 1, using their Panther Fusion machine.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Laboratory and testing equipment fi lls the lab at Interpath
Laboratory in Pendleton on the morning of April 17.
ing will we know the full
picture of COVID-19.
Locally, efforts to ramp
up capacity are emerging on
a couple of different fronts
despite some barriers.
Testing coming soon to
Pendleton lab
Interpath
Laboratory,
headquartered in Pendleton,
will soon start in-house test-
ing for COVID-19.
The nation’s quest to
solve testing capacity limita-
tions has been a rough road.
No one knows that better
than Judy Kennedy, Inter-
path’s marketing director.
She said that Inter-
path, which serves fi ve
states, sought to do its own
in-house testing early on,
but faced frustrating supply
chain issues. The lab already
had the necessary equipment
to run the tests, but struggled
to fi nd a reliable and consis-
tent source of reagents, the
chemical that mixes with the
person’s nasal swab to yield
a positive or negative result.
Those supplies seemed to
fl ow to the bigger national
labs instead of smaller,
regional facilities like Inter-
path. Kennedy said reagents
were being directed toward
high-impact areas.
“We were beating every
door down to fi nd reagents,”
she said.
So Interpath sent tests
to ARUP Laboratory, a
national lab located in Utah.
When ARUP eventually got
overwhelmed, Interpath’s
tests were forwarded on to
LabCorp, which also maxed
capacity and forwarded tests
to Quest. This fl ow from
lab to lab brought frustra-
tion, took precious time and
tested the ingenuity of lab-
oratories, Kennedy said.
At one point, many speci-
mens collected from around
the Pacifi c Northwest sat in
Interpath’s frozen storage
ready to send, while labs
dealt with capacity issues.
“We had a situation
where specimens were pil-
ing up,” she said. “It was
taking some labs two weeks
to turn out results. We strug-
gled terribly with this, trying
to do the right thing.”
Turnaround time is better
now — about 48 hours —
and test kits are increasingly
available. Interpath will
soon be able to do its own
testing and produce results
within 72 hours.
“The venders we’ve
been working with have
told us they’re going to
have reagents available very
soon,” Kennedy said. “Con-
tracts have been signed. By
May 1, we’ll be able to test
in-house.”
This diagnostic test ana-
lyzes swabbed tissue, using
coronavirus.
“When the stay-at-home
orders came, we saw a 40%
decrease of the routine test-
ing we normally do,” Ken-
nedy said.
Heppner begins rapid testing
Access to COVID-19
testing in Eastern Oregon
may have gotten a lift earlier
this month when the state
announced Pioneer Memo-
rial Hospital in Heppner was
one of three in the state to
receive the fi rst allocations
of the Abbott ID NOW rapid
testing instruments that
were provided by the federal
government.
The tests, which were
also distributed to rural hos-
pitals in Curry and Lake
counties, can reportedly
return positive results within
fi ve minutes and negative
results within 13 minutes.
“No. 1, I think it’s going
to be a big help to Eastern
Oregon,” said Bob Houser,
chief executive offi cer of
Pioneer Memorial Hospi-
tal. “I think it’s going to be
a great tool, especially when
we have been sending tests
off and sometimes it takes
two to three weeks to get a
result.”
Hospitals like Pioneer
Memorial, along with pri-
mary care doctors and labs
throughout the region, have
had their testing efforts
obstructed by a litany of
obstacles. Fiumara said
the Umatilla County Pub-
lic Health Department had
to offer help in at least one
instance last month just to
get a sample taken at the
Heppner hospital trans-
ported to the state lab.
The hope is these rapid
tests will be “a whole new
ballgame” in the country’s
testing capacity, but there’s
still a way to go before
their effectiveness is truly
known.
“Rapid tests sound great,
and they’ll do a lot of good
— if they work,” Fiumara
said. “But rapid tests typi-
cally aren’t the most accu-
rate tests we have.”
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