As the coronavirus spreads across regions outside of China, some New Yorkers are becoming increasingly worried that they may have contracted the disease which is said to be highly contagious. A Brooklyn man who recently returned from Japan, where there has been an outbreak, recently wrote an account of his experience on Reddit, which was later reported by ABC. After being admitted to an emergency room at a Brooklyn hospital for symptoms including fever, he said he tested negative for a battery of tests for the flu and other viruses but was unable to get tested for the coronavirus.
"The CDC denied the request on the ground that I did not have the most life-threatening symptoms: chest pain and shortness of breath," he wrote on Reddit. But he pointed out, "According to everything I read it's very likely not to have these symptoms if you're in your 30's and relatively healthy."
In fact, many patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus have exhibited mild symptoms. On Saturday, one pending test from a New York City resident who was recently in Italy came back negative. There have been no confirmed cases yet in the state.
A 31-year-old emergency room doctor at a prominent Manhattan hospital, who asked his name not be used because he didn’t have permission to speak to the press, said all the fears about the coronavirus have caused a surge in people asking to be tested.
He said he had seen patients with mild illness who had been in Italy and were requesting to be tested. "There’s so much up in the air [with] the whole process, it’s kind of arduous, it can only be done in Atlanta," he said.
Similar anecdotes and concerns are starting to surface on social media. On Twitter, some people have started using the hashtag #CDCwonttestme.
The tight restrictions on U.S. testing for a fast spreading contagion that has sickened more than 85,400 people and killed at least 2,921 people has alarmed health professionals. There are currently 64 cases in the country, the most recent and troubling ones in Oregon and Washington state, where the source of infection is unknown.
On Saturday, one infected person in the Seattle area was reported as having died, marking the first death from the virus in the country.
"You're driving at midnight in your car on the highway with no headlights," said Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and visiting scientist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, who has been tweeting about the lack of U.S. testing capacity with the hashtag #TESTVIRUSNOW. "Technically you don’t see a deer or anything ahead of you. Well, you don’t have your headlights on.”
On Saturday, the Food and Drug Administration announced steps to speed up the process for hospitals to test for the coronavirus. Not long afterward, Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the state could begin testing at the Wadsworth Lab in Albany.
Up until recently CDC's official protocol had been that only sick people who have been to China, or who come in contact with people with confirmed infections should be tested for the disease. But in the wake of outbreaks outside of China, Mayor Bill de Blasio has demanded that the CDC expand that criteria to include other affected countries, including South Korea, Japan, Italy and Iran. He and other government officials have also grown increasingly frustrated by the delay in allowing local authorities to do their own testing, a process that has been hampered by a flaw in the diagnostic test kits the CDC shipped out earlier this month. [Read latest update on testing here.]
“Let the localities do the testing so we can actually get to work more quickly addressing the cases,” de Blasio told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer on Friday. “This is really getting ridiculous."
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, has denied that the agency has refused testing to any patients whose health care providers had identified as potential cases. But California health officials said a patient who was eventually found to have the coronavirus was not given testing for several days by the CDC because she did not fit the criteria. To date, the CDC has conducted less than 500 tests for the coronavirus, according to its website.
On Friday, Messionner said the federal government had greenlit local health laboratories to begin using the test kits with new instructions. Any positive cases would still have to be confirmed by the CDC.
But Avery Cohen, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said the test kits from the CDC are not functional. CDC has said it will have new test kits available next week. The city is working to develop its own diagnostic test in the meantime.
A sick Manhattan woman whose husband recently returned from South Korea and fell ill said she has been unable to get tested for the coronavirus. Concerned about the ongoing outbreak of coronavirus in South Korea, where more than 1,000 people have been infected, she said she reached out on Monday to her primary care doctor who treated her promptly in his office and took special precautions like having her wear a face mask in his office.
She said her doctor called the New York City Health Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is administering the test for the virus officially known as COVID-19, but was unable to convince health officials to let her take it.
“Unless you’re an emergency situation, they won’t test you at all,” the woman told Gothamist/WNYC. She asked that her name not be used for privacy concerns.
The Manhattan woman who spoke to Gothamist/WNYC said she reached out to NYU Langone Hospital about getting tested after the CDC revised its testing criteria to include contact with South Korea on Thursday.
“They said they don’t have tests," she said. "So it doesn't matter that the guidelines include travel to [South] Korea, they just don’t have tests anyway."
Her doctor declined to speak on the record about any of his patients. But the woman said she was not tested for the flu or other viruses.
Instead, she said she returned home from the doctor's office earlier this week wearing a face mask and has stayed at home in a self-imposed quarantine, relying on food delivery and daily phone calls with her physician. She said when she placed a call to the city’s health department, she was told to call the Metropolitan Hospital. A person at the hospital told her to show up at the ER, but she said she decided not to go for fear of potentially spreading the illness to others there.
“I’m concerned that our health care workers are not prepared for the coronavirus," she said. "I feel that they need to be protected. I feel terrible for these people.”
Asked about the situation, a New York City’s Health Department spokesperson referred to the city's guidance for clinicians page and said that officials have been communicating regularly with health care providers on best practices for dealing with potential cases.
After days of stress and confusion on top of her illness, the woman acknowledged that it's possible she just has a case of the flu. But she is erring on the side of caution.
“I feel like I have the flu," she said. "I don’t need to be hospitalized, but you know, I don’t know what I have, so it’s impossible to tell.”
This story has been updated to reflect the latest test result that came back following the publication of this story. There are currently no confirmed or pending cases of coronavirus in New York City.
