MACON, Ga. — Macon-Bibb County Mayor Robert Reichert says the governor's office demanded to know why the county is taking so long to report testing numbers. This conversation happened between Reichert and Ian Caraway, a liaison for Governor Brian Kemp, on Tuesday.
Reichert said he put Caraway in contact with the local health department and the North Central Health District to get answers.
Michael Hokanson with the North Central Health District says the problem is mainly the turnaround time from Quest Diagnostics, the private lab hired by the Georgia Department of Public Health.
Hokanson says test results from Quest are taking 5 to 10 days-- or even longer in some cases.
"It's not just the Health District using them," Hokanson said. "It's hospitals. It's urgent care. It's healthcare providers. That creates a giant backlog of sample needing to be tested for COVID-19."
On April 7, Quest Diagnostics told CBS News that they were still working to clear a backlog of 80,000 tests nationwide.
However, on Wednesday, Quest told 13WMAZ they no longer have backlogs and now are able to give results back for "priority" patients in less than a day, and for other patients, less than two days on average.
Still, Hokanson says the Georgia Department of Public Health decided they're not using Quest Diagnostics anymore. Instead, the state has signed a contract with Ipsum Diagnostics, an Atlanta based company.
"That's going to be rolled out this week," Hokanson said. "Since it's a lab that's starting testing, we're hoping to see quicker turnaround times to get test results."
Hokanson says the change may also help with testing availability.
"We have limited test kits from Quest," Hokanson said. "The state office sends us down testing kits. They have to divvy up the testing kits for all the districts in the state. Those that have a higher priority will obviously get more kits. That affects us in certain ways because we cover a 13-county district."
He said the state is expecting a delivery of test kits from Ipsum Diagnostics. Then, those tests will be allocated to the districts. However, they don't know how many they'll receive at this time.
Hokanson also says they've expanded testing to four locations in the district. Just a few weeks ago, they only had one. He says this along with the change to Ipsum Diagnostics will hopefully fix the testing delays.
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