COVID-19 testing is about to get faster — and a Sacramento County firm is leading the push
After months of COVID-19 testing hurdles, Sacramento County is partnering with a local biotech company to speed up its test result turnaround and open up more community testing centers.
As part of the $13.5 million contract that’s set to be approved Tuesday, Folsom-based StemExpress could process about 19,000 COVID-19 tests each week, said Sacramento County health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson. StemExpress would process all the samples taken at the county-run testing sites with the goal of returning results to people within three days, he said, if not sooner.
The agreement comes as public health officials have struggled for months to not only make testing more easily accessible for Sacramento County’s most vulnerable communities, but also to ensure test results come back fast enough to be useful for those infected.
In May, the county began ramping up its testing effort by opening walk-up test sites in Sacramento neighborhoods in lower-income communities. The new testing centers helped public health officials see the growing disparities of the pandemic, with Latino, Black and Pacific Islander residents disproportionately infected and killed by the virus.
But the county temporarily closed those five county test sites in early July because of a nationwide shortage in testing supplies.
UC Davis Medical Center, which had partnered with the county to help process samples from those test sites, said its supplier couldn’t guarantee restocks of materials like reagents. At the time, commercial labs in states across the country were accelerating testing and putting pressure on supply chains amid a national surge in COVID-19 cases.
As the California National Guard stepped in to help temporarily reopen a few of the test sites, Sacramento County ultimately struck a deal with StemExpress. With the local company running tests, the county is set to open more community testing sites, including locations in Folsom, North Highlands, Rancho Cordova and Galt.
StemExpress, founded 10 years ago by Cate Dyer, is a national firm that sources and delivers isolated stem cells for trials, research and products.
When the pandemic hit, however, the company bought eight $100,000 machines from Thermo Fisher Scientific to conduct rapid testing, Dyer said.
As part of the purchasing agreement, Thermo Fisher Scientific guaranteed that StemExpress would receive weekly shipments of reagent as well.
“We can do 10,000 tests a day,” Dyer said.
Her company already runs tests for numerous Northern California hospitals, as well as nursing homes, police and fire departments, Native American tribes and private companies.
Dyer said her company has set a benchmark of returning test results within three days, “but our goal is to get down to 24 to 48 hours.”
Over the last month, widespread delays in test results across California have significantly hampered contact tracing efforts to target and isolate people who have the coronavirus.
“The effect of contact tracing is being able to get to people quickly. If not, those are opportunities lost for doing intervention,” Dr. Olivia Kasirye, Sacramento County health officer, previously told The Bee. “If it is beyond the 14 days, there is no point.”
Because these “critical testing activities are urgently needed especially in light of the resurgence in cases,” county staff closed the deal with StemExpress without using the typical competitive bidding process, a staff report stated.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is set to review and approve the contract with StemExpress during its meeting Tuesday.
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 5:00 AM.