When will rapid coronavirus test become available in Western Pennsylvania?

A new rapid covid-19 test designed to be conducted in doctors’ offices, hospital emergency departments and urgent care clinics could deliver results in minutes, but it’s not yet clear if or when those tests will arrive in the Pittsburgh region.

The Illinois-based medical technology company Abbott announced that it will work to make these tests available to health care providers in the hardest-hit areas of the country this week.

The test, known as ID NOW COVID-19, uses the company’s ID NOW platform, which is already widely available and used for influenza and strep tests, according to a statement from Abbott.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the test, which delivers covid-19 test results in under 15 minutes, officials said in a statement.

That’s compared to the hours — or even days, depending on backups at laboratories handling high volumes of tests — it takes to return many current covid-19 tests.

The company could not be reached for further comment Tuesday.

Pennsylvania Department of Health Secretary Rachel Levine said Tuesday that it is up to health care systems in the state to purchase those tests and the testing platforms, the same way health care systems have purchased the tests currently in use.

“I think the advantage of those is that they are much faster, so they could be of very good use in an emergency department,” Levine said of the new tests. “I think that we need to look very carefully at the testing, in terms of its accuracy. But I think overall it would be a good thing. But it’s not us providing it to them, it’s their decision whether they want to purchase those testing platforms, and then implement them in their emergency department.”

More than 42,000 people across Pennsylvania have been tested for covid-19, according to figures released Tuesday by the state health department.

Of that total, 4,843 people have tested positive and 63 people, including the two in Allegheny County, have died from complications from covid-19.

Allegheny County reported 31 new cases of the coronavirus Wednesday, bringing the countywide total to 356.

Health care system UPMC will consider implementing the new, rapid covid-19 test, but the test and its platform first need to be evaluated for sensitivity and reliability, Dr. Alan Wells, medical director of UPMC clinical labs, said Tuesday.

While the test is faster than others — minutes, rather than hours or a full day — it’s not comparable to checking your blood pressure at the pharmacy, Wells said.

He estimates the test system is likely capable of testing about three cases per hour, including the time it takes to prepare the test and collect a sample.

If UPMC decides to use the new test kits, they would likely be deployed in very specific settings, like an emergency room or urgent care setting, where it’s critical for doctors to know whether a patient is positive for covid-19 before exposing health care workers or contaminating a space, like an operating room, Wells said.

“And it will help for outpatients who might be lost to followup because they don’t have a fixed home or address, but they come in and you can test them acutely,” Wells said. “But medically, it’s not truly a game-changer.”

In most cases, it’s not medically necessary to receive covid-19 test results back in minutes, because a patient showing symptoms will be isolated and treated anyway, he said.

“You’re treating their disease, you’re treating whether they need more oxygen, whether they need intubation, ventilators, independent of whether or not they are covid positive, because anyone in that respiratory distress needs to be treated the same way,” Wells said. “We can wait a half a day or a day to institute experimental treatments based on our findings. Would faster be nicer? Yes. Is it needed? No.”

Given the shortage of swabs used to collect samples from the back of a patient’s nasal cavity, personal protective equipment and other supplies needed to collect and test samples, it’s also important to save those materials for tests that absolutely need to be performed, he said.

Allegheny Health Network is also working to secure the new test kits, and more details may be available next week regarding the timing and volume of test allocations, a spokesperson for the health system said Tuesday.