Retired doctor's struggle to get a COVID-19 test

Coronavirus: One case lays bare America's testing failure | BBC News - Aleem Maqbool:

March 25, 2020 - "Claudia Bahorik ... a retired physician ... had recently been on a trip to New York with her great niece, and soon after developed a cough and a fever, though it appeared to subside. She carried on as planned, performing jury duty, attending the funeral of a friend and travelling to Washington DC for a medical appointment.

"While she cannot be certain when she got infected, in early March, Dr Bahorik became extremely ill. 'By 9 March I was coughing so hard and I could hardly walk, and at that point I really suspected I had the coronavirus.' So began Dr Bahorik's quest to get tested....

• 9 March.... Bahorik sees her family doctor who agrees that she should have a coronavirus test. The local health system's protocol requires that he first carry out an influenza test, a test for RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus), a chest X-ray and some laboratory work to rule out other possibilities....
• 10 March... The doctor informs Claudia that while tests ruled out the other causes, Pennsylvania Department of Health did not give approval for her to get a coronavirus test. She does not meet the criteria of having known exposure to someone who had tested positive for coronavirus, or travelled to a country deemed to be high risk.... 
• Dr Bahorik calls the Department of Health. Despite exhibiting symptoms, and given her age and previous spells of pneumonia, they were inflexible....
• [A] nurse suggests she speak to her congressman. She calls the office of Senator Bob Casey, where she is advised to contact the Department of Health.
• 15 March.... After several terrible days of sickness, Dr Bahorik hears of eight coronavirus testing sites in the neighbouring county ... an hour's drive ... to the test centre in Macungie, Pennsylvania. Once again she is told that because she had not travelled to a high risk country or been in known contact with someone with coronavirus, she cannot have a test.
• "Having once been a doctor in the US Army Reserve, Dr Bahorik contacts her Veterans Affairs hospital. They later tell her that they do not have Covid-19 testing kits.
• 17 March.... Bahorik calls back her family doctor. She is told to go to the emergency room at nearby St Joseph's Hospital, where the clinician in charge has given assurances she can get a coronavirus test. At the hospital, she has to do another flu test and RSV test [but] this time, however, ... Dr Bahorik gets a [coronavirus] test.... She is sent home with antibiotics and told to wait 3-5 days for result....
• 23 March.... Bahorik calls the hospital to be told that the wait for test results is now 10 days because the samples were sent off to laboratories that are currently overwhelmed. She has not responded to the antibiotics, and remains ill....

"'They keep reporting that there are so few cases in my county, but they are not testing,' Dr Bahorik tells me.... Bahorik accepts that a test would do nothing to help her condition, but if she does have coronavirus she could at least definitively tell that to all of those that she came into contact with in the early days.... 'If I was carrying it then I could have infected up to 150 people.... A lot of my friends want to know the result of my test.' But nothing has yet been done to trace where she might have got her infection or to isolate those she came into contact with....

"None of the hospitals or clinics Dr Bahorik visited were prepared to talk about the specifics of her case, but we did hear from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which had twice denied her a test on the basis she was not eligible. 'We were following established criteria from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),' says Dr Rachel Levine, the Pennsylvania Health Secretary."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52019509