The big topic of discussion during Governor Ned Lamont’s coronavirus news briefing Wednesday was testing and how the state's testing capacity is crucial to reopening Connecticut’s economy.
Governor Ned Lamont announced a new partnership between Hartford Healthcare and Quest Diagnostic- a partnership committed to performing an extra 2,000 COVID-19 tests per day.
“This is about access to care and also how we can channel and use the tests to get all of our citizens in Connecticut the best care, necessary care at the right time, in the right place, with the right level of support,” Hartford Healthcare CEO Jeff Flaks said.
Lamont said the more tests performed, the more data state and health officials can use when determining when and how Connecticut can reopen its economy.
Currently, Connecticut performs an average of 2,600 COVID-19 tests per day, but with the new collaboration, the number of tests will increase by 80 percent.
“It's 2,000 tests right here in Hartford, but also in Norwich, in Bridgeport and New Britain,” Lamont said.
For now, the state is only testing residents with COVID-19 symptoms but up next --- antibody testing.
“About 40% of the people infected don't even show symptoms and right now we’re only able to test those with symptoms, so we’re missing a lot of the folks out of there and it's important to capture that in order to get back to work safely,” Lamont said.
“The next step is to start to look at the antibodies, this will also determine if you’ve had the disease and at the late stage of the disease it will determine if you have the antibodies and there's growing indication that will determine if you have immunity for a period of time,” CEO Quest Diagnostics Steve Rusckowski said.
Lamont said they could potentially increase testing capacity by 10 times over the next month or so and one of the ways they hope to achieve that is through mobile testing facilities. The mobile facilities are set to visit nursing homes, homeless shelters, and correctional facilities.