![]() Now, however, "here is no good reason not to do in kids. As a result, testing among children wasn't as prioritized in America, particularly given limited testing capacity in the country overall, Kliff and Sanger-Katz report. In addition, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, public health officials were not as concerned about children as an at-risk population, since comparatively few minors required hospitalization for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Why the age limits?Īccording to Kliff and Sanger-Katz, the age restrictions on testing seem to stem from a variety of concerns, including different rules on medical privacy, variations in health insurance, gaps in testing approval, and provider discomfort or concern with treating younger patients. Ultimately, Blute and her husband never got George tested for the coronavirus and elected to keep him isolated while they worked full-time from home, Kliff and Sanger-Katz report. ![]() However, her pediatrician's office did not have the necessary capacity to test her son.Īs a result, Blute said, "We were told to assume that everyone in the household has it, which didn't seem like the best information-we're both big believers in contributing to the data pool." Blute added, "We think that's really important." She turned to her son's pediatrician's office after learning that the District's public testing sites don't accept child patients. However, pediatricians' offices in the city seem to have limited testing capacity, Kliff and Sanger-Katz report.įor example, Audrey Blute's two-year-old son George developed a runny nose in July, and she wanted to get him tested for the coronavirus. Meanwhile, in the District of Columbia, public testing sites will not accept children younger than six because children have nearly universal health care coverage in the city-which means they should technically be able to be tested at a pediatrician's office. States and cities appear to have similarly varying age restrictions: Dallas, for instance, tests only patients ages five or older, while San Francisco-which previously tested only adults-recently set its minimum coronavirus testing age at 13. These restrictions vary widely from provider-to-provider: Walgreens, for example, doesn't test children at its drive-thru clinics, and CVS Health is imposing an age minimum of 12. Many testing sites set age limits on whom they will test for the novel coronavirus or they explicitly decline to test any children at all, Kliff and Sanger-Katz report. ![]() The 3 biggest questions about Covid-19 testing, answered Few sites test children ![]() As schools reopen, the United States is being forced to reckon with a new "bottleneck" in its coronavirus testing: Few places will test children, making the isolation and contract tracing of infected or exposed children difficult, Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz report for the New York Times' "The Upshot." ![]()
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