NORTHAMPTON — In a Facebook post that went viral, Massachusetts General Hospital physician Monique Aurora Tello wrote Wednesday that she saw eight people that morning with probable coronavirus.
“Some had been on buses and planes even this week, testing pending for some but the State wouldn’t let us test them all,” she wrote. “Not enough tests!!”
As the state works to manage the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Charlie Baker issued his most forceful call yet for the federal government to allow private labs and hospital facilities to test for the virus as the number of cases statewide climbed to 108.
After meeting with local officials in Pittsfield, where it appears the coronavirus has spread among the community without a known link to an infected person or high-risk region of the world, Baker said Massachusetts recently got enough testing supplies to test an additional 5,000 people, but still needs to significantly increase testing.
“We certainly believe we have what I would describe as an adequate supply today, but … we need the federal government — the CDC and FDA in particular — to give hospitals and testing facilities here in Massachusetts that have the capacity to test the material, and then the approval they need to actually begin to test themselves,” Baker said.
“The fact that the state lab is the single source of testing at this time is not adequate,” he said.
Baker would not say exactly how many people have already been tested in Massachusetts, but said the state now has the ability to test 5,000 people in addition to the “several thousand” it had the ability to test before getting the latest supply of tests. On Tuesday, Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel said the state had tested roughly 400 people, and had received approval from the federal government to increase its testing capacity to 200 per day.
The significant lack of testing resources in the state, and nationwide, is a top concern as health officials work to control the coronavirus outbreak. The state’s nurses union has also raised the alarm about a lack of personal protective equipment for front-line health care workers.
At Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Chief Medical Officer Estevan Garcia said Wednesday that there has not been a single patient tested and that no tests have been ordered. In a statement Thursday, he said that unlike in some other states, approval from the state Department of Public Health is required in Massachusetts before a test can be administered.
“It is clear that our ability to get in front of this infection is hampered by limited and restrictive testing strategies,” he said. “We are working with local and state partners to raise this issue to the highest levels. Because the testing is centralized in DPH lab, we are also delayed in getting results back to the hospitals. We expect more availability of testing to include commercial labs, but not for several weeks.”
That comes as the Massachusetts Nurses Association sent a letter to Baker, warning him that the union’s members are experiencing a significant lack of protective equipment for health care providers.
“[What] we’re hearing from our nurses and other health care providers is that there are limited resources available for protective equipment to face patients that may have the coronavirus,” MNA president Donna Kelly-Williams said in a phone interview Thursday.
Baker said his administration has been in touch with the state’s congressional delegation and the Trump administration about securing approvals for additional testing sites, including hospitals and private labs.
“We have hospitals in eastern Massachusetts, central Massachusetts, western Massachusetts, we have labs not related to hospitals, independent privately operated labs, all of which have the capacity to do this if they can get several requirements and authorizations from the feds,” Baker said.
State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, said that there is a lot of bureaucracy in getting people tested in the state.
“I do think it’s up to the federal government to step it up and offer new ways for us to get there faster,” she said of testing.
Kelly-Williams said the nurses union wants to be a part of the conversation going forward, and has advocated for several steps to make the most use of the limited resources that do exist.
Among those steps: limiting the number of staff triaging patients to help conserve protective equipment, and to ensure all of that staff has proper equipment; designating specific areas within hospitals to address suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases; prescreening people for the coronavirus before they arrive at health care facilities; halting the closure of beds, units and facilities across the state, which the union says strains emergency departments that will be needed elsewhere; and stopping all staff reductions.
“One thing that people have to realize is that so many of their own community resources have been eliminated,” Kelly-Williams said, mentioning as one example the recent announcement of the closure of inpatient psychiatric beds at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital in Holyoke. “People have to be paying attention to the amount of closures of facilities that have happened.”
The number of cases of coronavirus in Massachusetts reached triple digits on Thursday, with the Department of Public Health reporting a total of 108 cases, including six confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control. That’s 13 more cases than were reported Wednesday.
Worcester County is the only county with known exposure to COVID-19 to not have an uptick in cases, while there still have been no reported cases Hampshire, Hampden, Franklin, Bristol, Plymouth, Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket counties.
Berkshire County now has a total of nine cases. Public health officials also added a new category to its tracking to report that eight cases are associated with Berkshire Medical Center.
This story includes reporting from State House News Service. Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.