Georgia’s two U.S. senators are asking the Trump administration to steer more of the available COVID-19 testing resources to Georgia’s academic medical centers.
In a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler explain that the medical schools at Augusta University and Emory University are returning test results faster than Georgia’s commercial labs.
“While the commercial laboratories in our state have turnaround times in the range of two to six days, our academic medical centers have been able to return medical test results in a matter of hours,” the letter stated.
Augusta University President Brooks Keel said the university’s Medical College of Georgia is using a variety of innovative approaches to speed up test results, including setting up two drive-through test facilities that are conducting more than 100 tests per day and expanding a virtual screening app to include more of the state.
“This is why we’re here,” Keel said. “It’s times like these that we, as the state’s academic medical center, step up and lead.”
Both Augusta University and Emory have developed their own tests for coronavirus and are actively processing results each day.
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