"These Are the Questions We Should Be Asking About Coronavirus."

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https://www.propublica.org/article/i-lived-through-sars-and-reported-on-ebola-these-are-the-questions-we-should-be-asking-about-coronavirus

In 2014, I was a rookie reporter on the Bloomberg News health desk helping to cover the growing Ebola crisis in West Africa when we got word that the U.S. had its first diagnosed patient. My editor looked down his row of reporters and his eyes fell on me, the one with no familial obligations. “Hey Caroline,” he said, “want to go to Dallas today?” The experience gave me a deeper look into how governments and scientists grapple with a fast-moving, deadly target. I learned about contact tracing as I tagged along with CDC disease detectives. A colleague and I delved deep into how the government’s cumbersome contracting process delayed the development of a possible treatment for Ebola. I later covered Zika, reporting on Florida’s lonely fight against the virus, as Congress gave the state little assistance.

Every time, I’ve seen the same gaps emerge in the public’s understanding of what’s really happening. On one side, I have epidemiologists and lab directors explaining to me, in excruciating detail, nuanced models and technicalities, like how PCR assays work. On the other side, I see oversimplified headlines and misleading statistics touted by government officials.

Now I’m on ProPublica’s coronavirus reporting team, speaking to dozens of sources every day, from epidemiology experts and worried medical workers to members of the public, who are not sure what to take from the headlines they’re seeing. ProPublica specializes in accountability journalism, and our goal is to find out what’s happening and let the public know of any shortfalls in emergency response.

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As of Wednesday, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents public health labs across the United States, told me that each CDC test kit can run about 700 specimens. Note the “about” — you might have heard that each CDC test kit can run 1,000 specimens. That’s also true, but labs use up a certain amount of material in the process of setting up the kit and also to ensure that all the results from actual patient samples are accurate. So that’s where the “about 700” number is coming from.

None of those numbers, so far, are in units of what I care about — patients. We’re still talking about samples and specimens. APHL says the labs are running two specimens per patient, to double-check the result. So that means you actually can only test 350 people per kit.

Reporters, if an official gives you a number that’s in samples, I urge you to follow up.

Instead of asking: How many test kits do you have?

Ask this: How many samples are you running per patient?

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