The backlog for COVID-19 testing in New Jersey is getting worse

It's becoming harder, not easier, for people in New Jersey to receive testing for the COVID-19 coronavirus, with some having to sleep in their cars overnight to ensure they are among the lucky ones to get tested.

The New York Times' Rukmini Callimachi found that even when a person is tested, the state has a major backlog, and their test might have to go through a long journey to a lab hundreds of miles away. New Jersey has conducted roughly 115,000 COVID-19 tests, and Gov. Phil Murphy (D) recently admitted when it comes to testing, there are "constraints in the entire food chain." As of Monday night, there are a total of 64,584 confirmed cases in New Jersey, with 2,443 deaths, the Times reports.

Callimachi writes that the initial issue in New Jersey was a lack of test kits, but now there is a shortage of nurses and nasal swabs. Earlier this month, she went to the drive-thru testing site at Bergen Community College in Paramus, where some people got in line the night before to make sure they were one of the 500 people able to get tested.

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On the day Callimachi visited, the site ran out of tests by mid-afternoon. The test tubes were put into boxes and covered with ice packs, then driven to the Quest Diagnostics lab in Teterboro. Because there are so many tests being conducted in New York, and only a few hospitals in New Jersey have testing capabilities, this lab has been flooded with specimens. Tests from hospitals also take priority over those that come from drive-thru sites, so Quest decided to send the Bergen Community College tests to a lab in Chantilly, Virginia.

The Virginia lab has a machine that can run 376 tests at a time, with each cycle taking between three to four hours. Quest, however, has to limit the number of tests it runs in a day, because an enzyme necessary for the process is in short supply. Once the tests were completed, Quest sent the results to a federal contractor called Maximus, which then called the patients to let them know whether they tested positive or negative for COVID-19. Read more about the process, and how people Callimachi met dealt with their results once they received them, at The New York Times.