Coronavirus ‘surge testing team’ coming to Columbia, federal COVID coordinator says

The coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, who stopped in Columbia Thursday, said the federal government will send a “surge testing team” to the area in the coming days.

Dr. Deborah Birx, who met with members of the University of South Carolina community Thursday as she reviews the state’s and the university’s response to the pandemic, said the surge testing team, expected to arrive later this week or early next week, would dramatically expand testing to ensure that asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 are found and isolated.

“We want to ensure that cases are found because people will be enormously responsible if they know that they’re positive and they will do the actions that they need to protect others,” she said at an afternoon press conference at the USC Alumni Center. “We just need to make sure that people have the access to testing and we encourage testing.”

State health officials on Thursday reported just 264 new COVID-19 cases, marking the state’s third consecutive day with fewer than 500 cases, and its lowest percentage of positive tests in weeks.

While only 6% of tests reported Thursday came back positive, the positivity rate in South Carolina has averaged 13.9% this month and 15.1% cumulatively for all COVID-19 tests performed since March, according to the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

That rate is nearly three times higher than the World Health Organization’s suggested threshold for reopening.

In May, the WHO recommended that governments not consider reopening until the percent positive rate is below 5% for at least two consecutive weeks.

A high positivity rate generally indicates that more testing should be done, according to health experts.

In South Carolina, however, the number of people being tested for COVID-19 has dropped precipitously since mid-summer. The 4,417 tests reported Thursday represent a fraction of the number that were being performed in July, when the state regularly reported more than 10,000 tests daily.

Asked Thursday about the state’s drop in testing, Birx said she’d recommended to state officials that they move from the more invasive nasal swab testing to non-invasive saliva-based testing, as University of South Carolina has been doing for its students, so as not to discourage people from getting tested. Birx also said that the two types of tests produce similarly reliable results.

Birx lauded the state for wearing masks and social distancing, which she called “really critical, common sense approaches to preventing the spread of the virus.”

She also credited university officials for their approach to containing the virus on campus and said she would take their plan, which has continued to evolve based on available data and science, and share it with other colleges to highlight the work being done at USC.

USC made headlines earlier this month as its COVID-19 cases skyrocketed following the campus reopening last month. The school has reported nearly 2,000 cases since Aug. 1.

“They didn’t put their heads in the sand,” Birx said. “They tackled a really difficult issue head on, with a very dynamic plan.”

USC has used on-demand saliva testing, which was, in part, developed by the school’s College of Pharmacy, to track the spread of the virus on campus. The university can process more than 1,000 saliva tests per day and get results in under 24 hours.

While a staffer’s illness recently put USC’s saliva testing on hold, the university resumed testing Tuesday and is in the process of building back up to the roughly 1,300 daily tests it had been performing, Birx said.

She said she hopes the university can eventually get to 3,000 tests per day by running two shifts, so the entire student body can be tested every 10 days.

“Those of you who know me know that I always want more,” Birx said.

The COVID-19 task force coordinator, whose visit came one day after revelations that President Donald Trump knowingly minimized the virus’ threat in its early days to avoid creating a panic, said she’d been on the road since Wednesday morning and wasn’t up to date on the fervor that Trump’s comments had created.

“I know in the times that I have presented to anyone in the administration they have taken the data that I have shown them very seriously,” Birx said.

She encouraged all residents, especially those who had gathered with family or friends over the Labor Day holiday, to get tested.

“Most of our spreading today is happening in neighborhoods and family gatherings, where just because we know someone we think that there’s no way that they could have COVID,” she said. “But I want to tell you, you can’t tell.

“We know that asymptomatic spread is occurring, it’s occurring between and within families, it’s occurring during neighborhood parties, and we really encourage all of you to continue to get tested when you’ve had that kind of exposure so we can stop community spread.”

State health officials estimate that about 86% of South Carolinians who contract the virus don’t get tested.

South Carolina reported another 24 coronavirus-related deaths Thursday, bringing the state’s COVID-19 death total to 2,823, health officials said.

Since February, more than 190,000 deaths have been attributed to the virus nationwide.

This story was originally published September 10, 2020 at 3:59 PM.