{"id":32584,"date":"2020-03-27T14:29:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T19:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=32584"},"modified":"2020-03-27T14:29:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T19:29:01","slug":"oklahoma-positioned-to-ramp-up-coronavirus-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2020\/03\/27\/oklahoma-positioned-to-ramp-up-coronavirus-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma positioned to ramp up coronavirus testing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma now has the capacity to perform 10,000 tests for COVID-19. Oklahoma State University obtained the testing kits.<\/span><\/p>

Gov. Kevin Stitt said that the state and the university are competing against other states to obtain the reagent and that school leaders \u201cdid a great job getting these in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cOklahoma State University has done incredible work to quickly find innovative ways to help our state significantly increase its COVID-19 testing capacity,\u201d said Governor Kevin Stitt.<\/span><\/p>

As the state battles the virus, testing capability will be key. Knowing the number of cases will help Oklahoma leaders better model and predict the virus\u2019 spread.<\/span><\/p>

Stitt posted photos of himself in a Stillwater laboratory with testing kits and university officials on Facebook and Twitter, Thursday afternoon.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThis morning, Oklahoma State University… just received the reagents to perform 10,000 #COVID19 tests!\u201d Stitt wrote. \u201cThank you to President Burns Hargis, Dr. Kayse Shrum and the healthcare professionals who are working so hard to increase our state’s testing capacity. These kits will not only save lives, but help Oklahoma make data-driven decisions to #FlattenTheCurve.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Shrum said OSU was able to obtain the testing materials because it has a contract for automated testing with Thermo Fisher Scientific. She said this existing contract allowed them to move to the front of the line in states and private labs competing to get testing kits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In a press conference Friday, Stitt said OSU, OU and the Oklahoma State Department of Health are working as a single lab to be able to test more rapidly.\u00a0 He said results from the automated testing done at OSU would be available in 12 to 24 hours. Tests conducted earlier in the week were shipped out of state and may take as long as seven days to get results.<\/span><\/p>

Stitt signed an executive order last week to open up testing at OSU and the University of Oklahoma\u2019s Health Sciences Center. And on Sunday, Kayse Shrum, president of OSU Center For Health Sciences, said that university\u2019s lab would be testing by the end of the week.<\/span><\/p>

On Friday, Shrum said OSU would soon have the capacity to churn out results from 2,000 tests a day. However, state leaders said that they would still prioritize testing for hospitalized people, the elderly and other vulnerable populations.<\/span><\/p>

At OU, James Tomasek, Vice President of Research at OU Health Sciences Center, said that institution would be able to start conducting tests in three to five days after receiving kits.<\/span><\/p>

OU has yet to receive kits that are compatible with its testing technology. And Tomasek\u00a0 said that it takes time to get testing protocols configured and ready to go. At first the university could probably perform about 600 tests a day.<\/span><\/p>

He said eventually OU could potentially run 3,000 or even 4,000 tests a day if researchers there can figure out how to make a different testing method work. But he predicted that was still some time away.<\/span><\/p>

There continues to be a national shortage of supplies, he said.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThe vendors that produce these kits just do not have the capacity to produce the number that are needed across the country,\u201d Tomasek said. \u201cWe have requested kits. We are waiting on their arrival. But we have no idea what the timeframe is on when we will be able to get those.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

On Thursday, The Oklahoman newspaper reported that some 200 tests had been performed on people who worked at the State Capitol. Up to that date, only about 1,200 tests had been performed in the state, according to Department of Health numbers.<\/span><\/p>

Earlier this week, the state set up satellite testing sites in Pittsburg and Kay Counties, which include McAlester and Ponca City. Those sites tested about 50 people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Oklahoma\u2019s State Secretary of Health Jerome Loughridge said in the next several days, similar satellite sites would test people at undetermined locations in western Oklahoma.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma now has the capacity to perform 10,000 tests for COVID-19. Oklahoma State University obtained the testing kits.Gov. Kevin Stitt said that the state and the university are competing against other states to obtain the reagent and that school leaders \u201cdid a great job getting these in.\u201d\u201cOklahoma State University has done incredible work to quickly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":32585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32587,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32584\/revisions\/32587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}