Lines longer as U.S. testing efforts rev up; higher percentage of results showing positive for virus

Registered nurse Keith M. takes a sample from Jerri at a drive-thru covid-19 test site at Austin Emergency Center in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, July 8, 2020. 
(Jay Janne/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Registered nurse Keith M. takes a sample from Jerri at a drive-thru covid-19 test site at Austin Emergency Center in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, July 8, 2020. (Jay Janne/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

AUSTIN, Texas -- After four months, 3 million confirmed infections and more than 132,000 deaths, coronavirus cases in the U.S. continue to rise, with Americans facing long lines in the summer heat Wednesday at testing sites and even being turned away. Some have had to wait a week or more to get test results and receive a diagnosis.

Some sites are running out of kits, while labs are reporting shortages of materials and workers to process the swabs.

"It's a hot mess," said 47-year-old Jennifer Hudson of Tucson, Ariz. "The fact that we're relying on companies and we don't have a national response to this, it's ridiculous. ... It's keeping people who need tests from getting tests."

Testing has been ramped up nationwide, reaching about 640,000 tests per day on average, up from around 518,000 two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis. Newly confirmed infections per day in the U.S. are running at more than 50,000, breaking records at practically every turn.

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More testing tends to lead to more cases found. But in an alarming indicator, the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus is on the rise across nearly the entire country, hitting almost 27% in Arizona, 19% in Florida and 17% in South Carolina.

While the U.S. has conducted more tests than any other nation, it ranks in the middle of the pack in testing per capita, behind Russia, Spain and Australia, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Testing alone without adequate contact tracing and quarantine measures won't control the spread of the scourge, according to health experts. But they say delays in testing can lead to more infections by leaving people in the dark as to whether they need to isolate themselves.

An increase in deaths will inevitably follow an increase in cases, but it will take several weeks to a month, according to Paula Cannon, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

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"We are in the calm before the storm," Cannon said. "Deaths follow cases with a delay of two to four weeks. The fact that the rate is going down is not a cause for celebration when the absolute number of cases is growing exponentially. The absolute number of fatalities will be increasing, so it's hard to celebrate."

HOW MANY CASES?

While the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. topped 3 million Wednesday by Johns Hopkins' count, health officials have said that because of inadequate testing and the many mild infections that have gone unreported, the real number is about 10 times higher, or almost 10% of the U.S. population.

In New York City, the most lethal hot spot in the nation during the spring, testing was scarce early on but is now widely available.

The Department of Health and Human Services said this week that it will open free "surge testing" sites in three hard-hit cities: Jacksonville, Fla.; Baton Rouge; and Edinburg, Texas. The sites will be able to conduct as many as 5,000 tests a day in each city, with results in three to five days, officials said.

The sites will remain open for up to 12 days.

"Standing up surge testing sites is one of many tools we are utilizing now to assist local leadership to reduce community spread," Brett Giroir, the Health and Human Services Department assistant secretary, said in a statement.

In New Orleans, people were turned away from a free testing site for a third-consecutive day after it reached its daily allotment of tests. Health care providers are running low on trays and chemicals needed to run machines used in the tests.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego called the situation there "desperate" as residents have sat in sun-baked cars for up to 13 hours to get drive-thru testing. Robert Fenton, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA is doubling the testing supplies it plans to ship to Arizona.

The picture is likely to become clearer in coming weeks. The number of cases often picks up after a holiday weekend, when people travel to see family members and friends who aren't part of their normal routines, said Richard Oberhelman, associate dean for global health at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

"My guess is that we will see increases in the numbers in the next couple of weeks, following the surge in the number of cases, especially after the Fourth of July weekend," he said. And even if a high percentage of the recently infected are young and previously healthy, they still have opportunities to pass the virus to more-vulnerable groups.

"They will at some point go see grandma and grandpa," Oberhelman said.

GEORGIA SURGE

In Georgia, one of the states where cases are surging, officials are rushing to expand testing capacity as demand threatens to overwhelm six major sites around Atlanta, said DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond.

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"If you project this out over the next three weeks, we can't handle it," he said.

Atlanta's mayor said Wednesday that she will sign an executive order mandating masks in Georgia's largest city, defying Gov. Brian Kemp's decision to strongly encourage but not require face coverings.

Spokesman Michael Smith said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms plans to sign an order requiring masks.

Like a number of other local leaders in Georgia, Bottoms has unsuccessfully appealed to Kemp to change his order that local governments can't exceed the state's requirements.

"Other cities have taken the approach that they are going to defy the governor's executive order. Savannah has done it, some other cities have done it, and Atlanta is going to do it today," Bottoms told MSNBC in a Wednesday interview. "Because the fact of the matter is that covid-19 is wreaking havoc on our cities, specifically Black and brown communities with higher death rates."

Spokespeople for Kemp did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday. Kemp on Tuesday asked mayors and county commissioners to help him in a statewide push for voluntary masking.

"We don't need a mandate to have Georgians do the right thing, but we do need to build strong, public support," Kemp told mayors, according to prepared remarks released by his office.

Bottoms announced Monday that she has tested positive for the virus. Joe Biden has been considering the Democrat as his vice presidential running mate.

ELSEWHERE

In other developments around the world:

• Africa now has more than a half-million confirmed coronavirus cases, while South Africa's health minister declared Wednesday that "we have now reached the surge."

The continent-wide total is over 509,000, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after South Africa recorded another day of more than 10,000 confirmed cases as a new global hot spot. The country makes up 43% of Africa's cases.

Already covid-19 has killed more people in Africa -- 11,955 -- than Ebola did in its deadliest outbreak from 2014 to 2016 in West Africa, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

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• Australia's prime minister said a shutdown of the nation's second-largest city is necessary and promised continuing financial support for businesses that fear they won't survive a second lockdown.

The Victoria state government said Melbourne and part of its surrounding area will be locked down for six weeks, which was set to start Wednesday night because the rate of coronavirus spread was unsustainable.

• South Korea has reported 63 new cases of the coronavirus as health authorities scramble to stem transmissions tied to places such as churches, temples, restaurants and workplaces. The figures on Wednesday raised the national caseload to 13,244 infections, including 285 deaths.

• Authorities in Mumbai, one of the worst-affected Indian cities, are allowing people to get tested without a doctor's prescription.

• Hong Kong reported 19 new locally transmitted coronavirus infections on Wednesday, five of which could not be traced. Eight cases were linked to an infection cluster at an elderly care home and six to an outbreak in several restaurants in Kowloon.

• Indonesia reported a record 1,863 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, taking its total to 68,079, as the government plans to begin reopening the tourist island of Bali.

• A New Zealand politician has resigned after admitting he leaked the names of coronavirus patients to news outlets. Conservative opposition lawmaker Hamish Walker said Wednesday that he was sorry for his actions and was withdrawing his candidacy for the September general election in a seat he was expected to win. Walker sent the details of 18 patients to several news outlets on condition he remain anonymous as the source.

• Also in New Zealand, authorities said Wednesday that they will press charges against a coronavirus patient who escaped quarantine in Auckland and went shopping at a supermarket. Air Commodore Darryn Webb, head of managed isolation and quarantine, said the 32-year-old man escaped through a fence at the Stamford Plaza hotel and was gone for just over an hour before returning. The man later tested positive for the virus.

• Japan is facing a sudden spike in coronavirus cases, but this time with no political will for another round of economically punishing shutdowns.

At the end of last month, the national government abruptly dismantled a panel of medical experts that had been guiding the response to the virus, and replaced it with a group that includes envoys from the business world and others.

Tokyo's municipal government also abandoned an alert system based on numerical targets that could have triggered fresh shutdowns if the virus started spreading again.

The message from Japan's leadership has been clear: The virus will be tackled only through measures "that would not further harm the economy," according to Tokyo's governor, Yuriko Koike.

CHINESE ANGER

Separately, China on Wednesday defended the World Health Organization and lashed out at the U.S. decision to withdraw from the U.N. body.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the move was "another demonstration of the U.S. pursuing unilateralism, withdrawing from groups and breaking contracts."

The U.S. departure from the organization "undermines the international anti-epidemic efforts, and in particular has a serious negative impact on developing countries in urgent need of international support," Zhao said.

The Trump administration formally notified the U.N. on Monday of its withdrawal from the WHO, although the pullout won't take effect until next year.

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza called Trump's pullout decision "serious and wrong."

"The health crisis has shown that we need a reformed and stronger WHO, not a weaker one," he said.

His German counterpart, Jens Spahn, decried a "setback for international cooperation" on Twitter, writing that more global cooperation, not less, is needed to fight pandemics.

"European states will initiate #WHO reforms," Spahn tweeted.

Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said the WHO needs "more autonomy" and the world needs more cooperation to prepare for future pandemics.

Juergen Hardt, a foreign policy spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right coalition, said that the U.S. withdrawal damages American and Western strategic interests just as China, a key WHO member state, has been taking a greater role in international institutions.

"As the biggest contributor so far, the U.S. leaves a big vacuum," Hardt said. "It is foreseeable that China above all will try to fill this vacuum itself. That will further complicate necessary reforms in the organization."

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ratcheted up the Trump administration's months of criticism of the U.N. health agency.

In his comments, Pompeo repeated the WHO's alleged failures in responding to the virus's emergence in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December and accused the agency of having "a long history of corruption and politicization" in dealing with other diseases.

"There is a real focus on the failures that took place around Wuhan and the World Health Organization's fundamental inability to perform its basic core mission of preventing a global pandemic spread," Pompeo said.

"We'll get it right, but as the president has made very clear, we are not going to underwrite an organization that has historically been incompetent and not performed its fundamental function," Pompeo said.

Information for this article was contributed by Christopher Weber, Acacia Coronado, Jeff Amy, Cara Anna, Jamey Keaten, Matthew Lee, Ben Nadler, Geir Moulson, Aritz Parra, Nicole Winfield and Maria Cheng of The Associated Press; by David R. Baker, Michelle Fay Cortez and Shira Stein of Bloomberg News; and by Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi of The Washington Post.

Vehicles line up at a coronavirus testing site Wednesday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. Florida is reporting a positive test rate of 19%. More photos at arkansasonline.com/79covid/.
(The New York Times/Saul Martinez)
Vehicles line up at a coronavirus testing site Wednesday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. Florida is reporting a positive test rate of 19%. More photos at arkansasonline.com/79covid/. (The New York Times/Saul Martinez)
A doctor consults with a covid-19 patient Wednesday at an isolation center in Mumbai, India. India has overtaken Russia as the third-worst-affected nation in the coronavirus pandemic, and Mumbai residents are being allowed to get tested without a doctor’s prescription.
(AP/Rajanish Kakade)
A doctor consults with a covid-19 patient Wednesday at an isolation center in Mumbai, India. India has overtaken Russia as the third-worst-affected nation in the coronavirus pandemic, and Mumbai residents are being allowed to get tested without a doctor’s prescription. (AP/Rajanish Kakade)
Nurse Esma Radoncic, left, prepares to take a nasal swab from Eric Antosh at a COVID-19 testing site in Brooklyn run by NYC Health + Hospitals as part of the "Get Tested Day of Action," Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in New York. Free testing is being offered at sites throughout the city. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Nurse Esma Radoncic, left, prepares to take a nasal swab from Eric Antosh at a COVID-19 testing site in Brooklyn run by NYC Health + Hospitals as part of the "Get Tested Day of Action," Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in New York. Free testing is being offered at sites throughout the city. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
People line up for COVID-19 testing at a mobile testing site in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Testing sites in New Orleans have been running out of their daily allocation of tests within minutes of opening. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
People line up for COVID-19 testing at a mobile testing site in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Testing sites in New Orleans have been running out of their daily allocation of tests within minutes of opening. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Health officials and members of the military assist during COVID-19 testing, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, at HEB Park in Edinburg, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP)
Health officials and members of the military assist during COVID-19 testing, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, at HEB Park in Edinburg, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP)
Edif Madrid, right, and Rosa Guillen wait in a line for COVID-19 testing at a mobile testing site in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Testing sites in New Orleans have been running out of their daily allocation of tests within minutes of opening. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Edif Madrid, right, and Rosa Guillen wait in a line for COVID-19 testing at a mobile testing site in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Testing sites in New Orleans have been running out of their daily allocation of tests within minutes of opening. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Shania Dod, right, collects a sample at a United Memorial Medical Center COVID-19 testing site, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Shania Dod, right, collects a sample at a United Memorial Medical Center COVID-19 testing site, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
A man attempts to self administer a COVID-19 test during a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mass testing site at HEB Park, Wednesday, July, 8, 2020 in Edinburg, Texas. Hidalgo County is one of only three sites picked by the federal government for the mass testing. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP)
A man attempts to self administer a COVID-19 test during a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mass testing site at HEB Park, Wednesday, July, 8, 2020 in Edinburg, Texas. Hidalgo County is one of only three sites picked by the federal government for the mass testing. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP)
A nurse in protective gear administers a coronavirus test in Omaha, Neb., Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Vice President Mike Pence says the U.S. government will issue guidance encouraging front-line health care workers to reuse personal protective equipment. Pence added that PPE supplies remain "very strong" but the Trump administration will be encouraging healthcare workers "to use some of the best practices" to "preserve and reuse" face masks and other protective equipment. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
A nurse in protective gear administers a coronavirus test in Omaha, Neb., Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Vice President Mike Pence says the U.S. government will issue guidance encouraging front-line health care workers to reuse personal protective equipment. Pence added that PPE supplies remain "very strong" but the Trump administration will be encouraging healthcare workers "to use some of the best practices" to "preserve and reuse" face masks and other protective equipment. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
A National Guardsman directs traffic at a COVID-19 testing site outside Hard Rock Stadium, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in Miami Gardens, Fla. Florida is one of the nation's hot spots for coronavirus. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
A National Guardsman directs traffic at a COVID-19 testing site outside Hard Rock Stadium, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in Miami Gardens, Fla. Florida is one of the nation's hot spots for coronavirus. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
People wait inside their vehicles in line at COVID-19 testing site Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in Houston. Texas has surpassed 10,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time as a resurgence of the outbreak rages across the U.S. The record high of 10,028 confirmed cases Tuesday follows Republican Gov. Greg Abbott decision to mandate masks in much of the state and to close bars, retreating from what had been one of America’s fastest reopenings.  (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
People wait inside their vehicles in line at COVID-19 testing site Wednesday, July 8, 2020, in Houston. Texas has surpassed 10,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time as a resurgence of the outbreak rages across the U.S. The record high of 10,028 confirmed cases Tuesday follows Republican Gov. Greg Abbott decision to mandate masks in much of the state and to close bars, retreating from what had been one of America’s fastest reopenings. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Health officials and members of the military assist during COVID-19 testing, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, at HEB Park in Edinburg, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP)
Health officials and members of the military assist during COVID-19 testing, Wednesday, July 8, 2020, at HEB Park in Edinburg, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP)

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