COVID-19 cases continue to rise due to the Delta variant of the virus and demand for COVID-19 tests is now also increasing.
A Friday USA Today report said that Johns Hopkins University found that Americans are getting tested for the virus at a pace of more than 1 million tests daily. At-home testing kits are also in high demand as the antigen test makers work to meet rising demands after scaling back manufacturing this spring, said the outlet.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testing was up more than 9 percent from Aug. 6 to Aug. 12 compared to the previous week.
While there is increasing demand for tests, opportunities to get them are not as plentiful as they were before COVID-19 were rolled out late last year. Many large, government-run testing sites switched to vaccinations sites or shut down in the spring, when hospitalizations were declining, said USA Today.
However, there are some new testing sites opening up, such as a high-volume center in San Francisco.
This comes as hospitalizations are on the rise again, even though more than 200 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. From Aug. 11 to Aug. 17, the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 was up around 14 percent compared to the previous week, said the CDC. Overall positive cases were also up around 14 percent.
“As COVID-19 positivity rates surge, some worry the high percentage of positive tests in the U.S. means too many people are foregoing testing because it's too hard to get an appointment,” said USA Today.
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“Positivity has climbed to highs that we haven’t seen since the big winter surge,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. As cases continue to climb, Nuzzo said testing becomes even more important.
She said testing is crucial to understand how the virus spreads and the harm it could cause. Indeed, tracking the highly contagious Delta variant has been hindered by a lack of testing as of Thursday, according to NBC News.
Information about places that still offer COVID-19 testing is available through the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
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