A nurse in California says she has been left in limbo because she is being denied a test for coronavirus despite showing symptoms after treating an infected patient.
The nurse previously volunteered to treat a confirmed patient, and has slammed the Center of Disease Control decision not to test her as ‘ridiculous and uneducated’.
The anonymous nurse based at a northern California Kaiser facility released a chilling statement via National Nurses United Union president Bonnie Castillo on Thursday in which she outlined how testing was being treated like a ‘deli counter’ by federal officials.
The nurse claims they have been recommended for testing by their doctor and by county officials but has been told their case is not yet considered serious enough to warrant a test, despite being in direct contact with a known patient.
They are now being left in limbo, reluctant to return to work without testing for fear of infecting further patients.
The statement was widely shared on social media as the CDC’s decision was branded ‘bonkers’.
National Nurses United Union president Bonnie Castillo read the statement Thursday
Deborah Berger, president of National Nurses United, speaks during a news conference at the National Nurses United offices on March 05, reading a statement from an anonymous nurse
A new laboratory test kit for use in testing patient specimens for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A nurse in California has been refused testing
A video published to Twitter Thursday showed Burger reading out the statement from the anonymous nurse who said they were concerned about the government’s response to the outbreak as nurses call for further protections while treating the outbreak.
Despite wearing all the recommended gear and using caution and training from their employer, the nurse began to show coronavirus symptoms after bravely stepped forward to treat a person tested positive.
‘I did this assuming that if something happened to me, of course I too would be cared for. Then, what was a small concern after a few days of caring for this patient, became my reality,’ the statement said.
‘I started getting sick.’
The nurse was put on 14-day quarantine when they started showing symptoms and a test was ordered by their doctor and the public county officer but the ‘CDC would not initiate the testing’, they claim.
According to the nurse, the CDC said they could not have the coronavirus if they had been wearing protective clothing.
‘What kind of science-based answer is that? What a ridiculous and uneducated response from the department that is in charge of our health in this country,’ they said in the statement.
The CDC then allegedly went on to claim that the test would only be run ‘by illness severity’.
‘This is not the ticket dispenser at the deli counter; it’s a public health emergency! I am a registered nurse, and I need to know if I am positive before going back to caring for patients,’ the statement continued.
‘I am appalled at the level of bureaucracy that’s preventing nurses from getting tested. That is a health care decision my doctor and my county health department agree with. Delaying this test puts the whole community at risk.’
The nurse’s comments were widely shared on social media where people questioned the CDC and government’s response and claimed the U.S. outbreak was quickly going to deteriorate into a crisis.
Actor Ken Marino claimed ‘this is absolutely bonkers that the CDC responded this way’ while author and social activist Naomi Klein said it was ‘absolutely chilling’.
‘They seem to be actively suppressing the number of cases, which can only be happening for political reasons. This is also a reminder of the courage of nurses, who are our first responders in every single crisis,’ she added.
Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal said that not only was the current response going to result in a health crisis but that it would also soon become an ‘economic crisis’.
‘We need better leadership in Washington and better action planning immediately,’ claimed TV chef Andrew Zimmern, who added that ‘the insanity of the govt hurdles is plain to see’.
The danger to nurses was also quickly highlighted with Joanne Freeman, history professor at Yale saying, ‘this is bad’ if nurses are told they must wait in line.
‘The US is rationing care for *nurses* during a public health emergency,’ writer Robery Mackey emphasized.
‘Does the CDC only have something 40 tests and they’re just lying?’ questioned National Review writer Michael Brendan Dougherty.
‘This is nuts. You can’t get more obviously high risk than a nurse attending to a confirmed case.’
Others continued to blame the government from refusing testing so they can under count infections in the country.
‘The US government is blatantly undercounting infections, even by denying confirmation testing to sickened healthcare professionals,’ wrote actor Evan Handler.
‘This country is not ready for this. This anti-science administration is lying about or doesn’t truly understand what is happening. People are going to die because of Trump’s stupidity,’ added writer Joshua Topolsky.
It is not known what Kaiser facility the nurse works in but the first Californian death was taken by ambulance on February 27 to Kaiser Permanente Roseville and placed in isolation before passing away.
Kaiser Permanente Roseville where a coronavirus patient in California passed away
Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center. It is not known if the nurse worked here
As of Friday only 1,895 people in the US have definitively been tested for coronavirus, according to a new investigation.
The Atlantic could only verify that as many tests had been run, despite federal officials claims that they now have capacity to test 15,000 Americans for the virus that’s infected nearly 300 across the country and killed 15.
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been widely criticized for first distributing a flawed test, then only providing states with a couple hundred test each.
And officials from President Trump’s coronavirus task force have had to walk back many of their promises for expediting and more widely distributing tests.
Meanwhile, US officials have so far declined to use the 15 minute blood test for coronavirus that a South Carolina company, BioMedomics, claims to is already helping Japan, China and Italy catch and isolate cases faster.
It’s not clear why the test is unable to move forward, but comes amid widespread frustrations over the limited availability of slow tests for the virus sweeping the nation.
In lieu of a treatment of vaccine for the new virus, COVID-19, testing is essential if the US is to have any hope of containing the deadly disease that has now infected people in more than 20 states.
‘The CDC got this right with H1NI and Zika, and produced huge quantities of test kits that went around the country,’ Thomas Frieden, former director of the agency told The Atlantic.
‘I don’t know what went wrong this time.’
President Donald Trump on Friday brushed off concerns about the limited number of coronavirus test kits during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and announced during a chaotic press conference that ‘anybody who wants a test can get a test.’
He left officials scrambling to explain how such a commitment could happen after free-wheeling press availability where he publicly disagreed with his own government’s approach to the cruise ship, referenced impeachment, asked about TV ratings, and called a Democratic government ‘a snake.’
‘The tests are beautiful,’ Trump added after meeting with top U.S. scientists amid the coronavirus outbreak. ‘Anybody who right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test,’ Trump said.
Trump praised his own administration’s response amid concerns that the million test kits promised had yet to materialize.