Why Falling Demand for COVID-19 Testing May Be a Mixed Blessing

We all understood that the massive spike in COVID-19 testing was unsustainable and bound to gradually peter out. But now it appears that the decline is coming steeper and faster than anybody expected. From a public health standpoint, that sounds like great news; however, it may actually not be an entirely positive development. The COVID-19 Testing Roller Coaster Last year at this time, labs were just beginning to feel the pressure of what would become unprecedented demand for COVID-19 testing and test products. And after a brief lull in the spring, testing just kept climbing and climbing all through 2020. The recent spate of record breaking fourth quarter earnings reported by Thermo Fisher, Perkin Elmer, LabCorp, Quest, Hologic and other COVID-19 testing firms is testimony to just how fast a service that didn’t even exist when the year began had ballooned so much by the time the year ended. But in 2021, things seem to be headed in the opposite direction. From January through the end of February, the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. declined 70 percent. Even better was that COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths were also sharply down. Of course, these trends were accompanied by a significant fall off in demand for COVID-19 testing. Across the country, COVID-19 testing sites are closing down or rolling back hours of operation due to decreased testing demand. In Los Angeles county, more than 180 testing sites were operating at a third of capacity. So, What’s the Problem? Of course, every silver lining has a cloud. Falling case, hospitalization and death rates are an unqualified good. The problem is that it may be impossible to sustain the declines if testing falls off too much. As it has since the pandemic began, testing remains critical to coronavirus containment and preventing new surges, particularly as new and more transmissible variants like the strain discovered in the United Kingdom emerge. The other red flag is pandemic fatigue, complacency and a false sense of security. Ominously, the downward trend in COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations exhibited in the first two months of the year have leveled off. In fact, rates have actually increased slightly in March. Takeaway Even though it feels like things may be slowing down a bit in this pandemic, it’s crucial for the country to remain vigilant and keep getting tested for COVID-19, especially but not exclusively people displaying symptoms of the virus.