The local coronavirus Incident Command Public Information Officer Richard Egan recently explained the various testing measures in Lassen County and why some test results take longer to come back.
As of 12:58 p.m. Wednesday, April 1, there have been 41 tests for COVID-19 in Lassen County; 33 have come back negative, eight are pending.
“As you all know, state wide and nationally, they’re making great strides in improving the capacity for testing, and increasing the capacity and speed by which testing is done. but there still remains a limited capacity to perform tests and that necessitates prioritizing which tests get done first,” Egan said in a March 30 public information update posted to lassencares.org.
The group of testing which gets processed first are Tier 1 tests, which encompasses individuals currently hospitalized or a hospital worker with symptoms.
As of Monday, March 30, Egan noted the county has only done one Tier 1 test.
Tier 2 tests include individuals with symptoms from a vulnerable group.
Finally, Tier 3 includes individuals experiencing mild symptoms, and are not from a vulnerable group.
Egan said the test results from Tier 1 can be returned within 24 to 48 hours, whereas some results from Tier 2 and Tier 3 can take about a week or longer to come back, depending on the lab’s caseload.
