[magnus]

I read an article recently (can't seem to find it now) that said the issue was that we were too reliant on the more automated testing machines.  One where you could just put it in and it'd do everything for you.  And unfortunately, while we have a ton of these machines.  We don't have whatever it was that was needed for these machines to process these tests (I'll call them test kits).  These companies all had their own proprietary kits.  The lack of a common standard means that if you are using company ABC's most prolific machine that can process 6k tests a day.  You're in a bind because that company has 100k such machines out there, but can only produce 1 million test kits  a day, so you're still short 5 million from maxing out those machines.

I'm making up the numbers, but the testing crunch, at least for the US, was attributed to the preference for these more automated machines, each with their own proprietary test kits.

And so like dabigv13 said hospitals are resorting to have to buy multiple brands so that they won't be hamstrung by one company running out of test supplies.  Unfortunately, that likely means that the hospitals are running way under capacity considering all the machines they have.

Edit:
Found the article:
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-c...SL2N2EV01Z

[magnus]

I read an article recently (can't seem to find it now) that said the issue was that we were too reliant on the more automated testing machines.  One where you could just put it in and it'd do everything for you.  And unfortunately, while we have a ton of these machines.  We don't have whatever it was that was needed for these machines to process these tests (I'll call them test kits).  These companies all had their own proprietary kits.  The lack of a common standard means that if you are using company ABC's most prolific machine that can process 6k tests a day.  You're in a bind because that company has 100k such machines out there, but can only produce 1 million test kits  a day, so you're still short 5 million from maxing out those machines.

I'm making up the numbers, but the testing crunch, at least for the US, was attributed to the preference for these more automated machines, each with their own proprietary test kits.

And so like dabigv13 said hospitals are resorting to have to buy multiple brands so that they won't be hamstrung by one company running out of test supplies.  Unfortunately, that likely means that the hospitals are running way under capacity considering all the machines they have.

Edit:
Found the article:
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-c...SL2N2EV01Z