Two tier testing for COVID-19

[milestogo]

This is an excerpt from an email I received from my city of Madison representative this afternoon:

DHS and Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene to move to tiered COVID-19 testing to manage capacity
Despite The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH) significantly increasing their capacity for COVID-19 testing, the number of testing specimens being received far exceeds their daily capacity. In order to conserve supplies for testing, WSLH and DHS are now prioritizing two tiers of cases for testing:

Tier One (Individuals who): are critically ill and receiving ICU level care with unexplained viral pneumonia or respiratory failure are hospitalized (non-ICU) with fever or signs and symptoms of lower respiratory tract illness (cough, shortness of breath) and either known exposure to a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patient or travel to an area with sustained community transmission

Tier Two (Individuals who): are hospitalized (non-ICU) with unexplained fever and signs/symptoms of lower respiratory tract illness are health care workers with unexplained fever and signs/symptoms of a lower-respiratory illness, regardless of hospitalization

Test requests that do not meet these criteria will be sent to other labs in the state and country for testing, resulting in longer wait times.

Presumably there are MANY people with mild symptoms are not being tested at all. So the data is not current with the actual number of cases, a number which nobody knows.

Actually, there's another tier: If you're a celebrity or have a lot of money you can get a test without any symptoms at all.

[DSandra]

1. The virus is running rings around this country

This virus really is testing governments around the world.

[onecaliberal]

2. Not really just this government who doesn't want ACTUAL FUCKING NUMBERS

[uponit7771]

3. Trump is allowing it to do such we need unrestricted testic