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Gary Cohan, a Beverly Hills internal medicine physician, said he’s had to turn away numerous patients seeking testing. Some doctors whose private practices treat celebrities and the wealthy say they are following the CDC guidelines on tests.ĭr. Oral swabs run a higher risk of people coughing or exposing the tester to the virus, Pekosz said. The CDC recommends nasal swabs for coronavirus testing and says oral swabs are a lower priority and should be collected only if a nasal test is not available. “The last thing hospitals need right now are people who are healthy going in saying they need medical care,” Pekosz said. If patients aren’t made aware of this key difference it could lead them to seek additional treatment, he said. He said he personally would not take such a test because of his concerns about their reliability.Ī blood antibody test can indicate only if a person has had the virus, whereas the CDC-approved nasal swab tests can detect a current infection, Pekosz said.
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“But we’re not looking at this time in regards to ‘How can we make more money doing testing?’ or ‘Who we can charge more to do a test.’ It’s actually really trying to take care of the patients we already have and then figuring out how we can increase testing and do things for the good of the community.”Īndrew Pekosz, a biologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said there has been a surge of foreign companies rushing to develop new coronavirus blood tests in recent weeks. “We have had a lot of new patients contact us who money wasn’t a factor for they were willing to pay whatever was needed,” he said. Nazarian said he expects the rapid tests, which involve taking blood samples, to arrive from China this weekend, at which point he hopes to open a drive-through testing option available to any person willing to pay about $500 or $600. As a result, he had about 50 available for his patients, which were administered during house calls by nurses wearing protective gear.īecause of a “massive shortage” of testing kits, however, Nazarian decided to place an order for the rapid-test kits he said have been used in China and South Korea that produce results in a matter of minutes instead of days. Nazarian’s yearly membership fee starts at $5,500 and can go up to $10,000.Ībout a month ago, when COVID-19 cases were still primarily occurring overseas, Nazarian began looking into obtaining extra nasopharyngeal swabs and viral transport mediums - the materials needed to test for the coronavirus. David Nazarian, a primary care physician, said he’s been receiving an influx of calls since the coronavirus outbreak hit the U.S.īut because he has a concierge medical practice - meaning he limits his clientele to “influential people, A-list celebrities, and CEOs” in exchange for more personalized care - he has been granting tests only to his existing clients. “Our response should not be based on auctioning off scarce resources to the highest bidder.” “So in a crisis, this is how we handle it? We auction these tests? Is this how we want our society to operate?” Pan asked. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a pediatrician who has strongly criticized Gordon and other doctors over their position on vaccinations, said he believed the practice was not widespread but denounced selling the tests at high prices to whomever can afford them, saying it was unprofessional conduct that the Medical Board of California should investigate.ĭoctors, he said, should be following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that prioritize testing for people who have COVID-19 symptoms and are hospitalized have compromised immune systems or other factors that put them at high risk or recently traveled to countries with major outbreaks or had close contact with someone who has the virus. California These 25 powerful images show California’s new realityĮerie photos and stunning aerial shots show what California looks like under Gov.