The University of Washington’s medical system says it’s begun testing all patients admitted to its hospitals for coronavirus.
The change in policy recognizes the fact that some patients may carry the virus that causes COVID-19 even if they don’t have the best-known symptoms of the disease, such as fever or a dry cough.
“We are finding people who are asymptomatic who have COVID in their nasopharynx when we swab them,” Chloe Bryson-Cahn, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said in a video about the policy change.
UW Medicine spokeswoman Susan Gregg said the previous policy was to test only patients who were being admitted with COVID-19 symptoms. “Now we will be testing all patients admitted to the hospitals even if they do not have symptoms,” she told GeekWire in an email. “This is similar to some of our surveillance activities to see who may be colonized with a particular resistant bacteria.”
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UW Medicine’s hospital network includes UW Medical Center – Montlake, UW Medical Center – Northwest, Valley Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center (which is owned by King County and managed by UW under contract). In a news release, UW Medicine said the new policy currently applies to Harborview as well as the Montlake and Northwest hospital campuses. Gregg said Valley Medical will be rolling out expanded testing as well.
Gregg noted that UW Medicine has been testing all patients who go into surgery, to make sure health care workers are taking appropriate precautions in the operating room. “In this case, as we learn more about individuals having a positive test without symptoms, such as what we are seeing in the skilled nursing facilities, we want to know the status of every patient in our hospitals so that our clinicians and staff can safely care for them,” she said. “We are able to do this because we have quick turnaround times with our internal testing capability.”
Tests will be processed by the UW Medicine Virology Lab, which rolled out its own clinical lab test more than a month ago after getting an emergency go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration. Patient care won’t be held up while waiting for results to come back, Bryson-Cahn said, but the results should be available on a same-day basis.
Public health officials recommend contacting your primary health care provider if you suspect you have the virus. Under the surge procedures that UW Medicine put in place last month, patients with respiratory symptoms may be screened before they’re admitted to the hospital.
Lisa Brandenburg, president of UW Medicine Hospitals and Clinics, said in a video released on Friday that about 112 patients in UW Medicine’s hospitals have tested positive for COVID-19.
“This number is a slight decline from the last few days,” she said. “And we are cautiously optimistic that we are seeing that ‘flattening of the curve.’ At the same time, we know that we are prepared.”
Brandenburg said UW Medicine’s hospitals have a plan to take care of 600 additional patients if necessary.
Heightened coronavirus testing, plus contact tracing with follow-up quarantine requirements, are considered among the preconditions for relaxing the shelter-at-home orders and limitations on mobility that are currently in place.
Update for 3:40 p.m. PT April 13: This report was updated with information from Gregg about Valley Medical Center, plus information from the UW video interview with Bryson-Cahn.
