A committee of infectious disease researchers this week issued a statement urging hospitals to stop testing new admissions for COVID-19, saying that doing so will extend patients’ wait times.
Researchers and doctors affiliated with the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, a nonprofit organization, said that hospitals should not automatically test for the virus because it can cause “delays in patient placement” and “postponement of necessary procedures” unrelated to COVID-19, according to a research paper published online by Cambridge University.
“As the pandemic evolved, asymptomatic patient screening had some unintended consequences,” they wrote. “Adverse outcomes related to asymptomatic testing include” those aforementioned delays as well as “strains on laboratory and testing personnel and resources, and increased costs,” they continued….