State looks to dentist offices for help with coronavirus test swab supply
Health officials say Kansas needs thousands more coronavirus test swabs to run the amount of tests they would like.
TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) – Health officials said Monday that Kansas needs thousands of more coronavirus test swabs to run the number of tests they would like.
Kansas Department of Health and Environment labs are running 200-300 tests per day, but with a recently acquired testing machine, the state could be running up to 1,000. The state’s top doctor said the lack of small, plastic, breakaway nasal swabs are preventing it.
“As much as this little device seems rather diminutive,” said KDHE Secretary Lee Norman, referencing a swab. “This has been the rate-limiting factor in terms of how many tests we can run.”
Norman said the state is looking to purchase swabs from places like dental offices that have 3D printers that can produce them.
“Dental offices can do these. Dental offices have the 3D printing as part of their dental processes that will make these,” Norman said. “We’re willing to go into partnership with dental offices to produce these within the state of Kansas.”
He said the materials to make them exist at technology labs, universities, in addition to dental offices.
The state has already ordered tens of thousands of swabs from retailers but have not received all of them.
Norman said that the increase in swabs will allow the department to take testing to the next stage.
“We’ve already started in five counties with an enhanced testing ability, and that includes Johnson, Wyandotte, Leavenworth, Shawnee, and Sedgwick, where they’re kind of drive-thru testing clinics, if you will, and that will allow us to do broader population studies,” Norman said
He also said that if the state could run 15,500 random tests throughout Kansas, he believes the department could predict incidents county by county and on the statewide level. That process could include blood tests as well as nasal coronavirus tests.
Norman said he would like to get as many as 100,000 swabs for additional tests.