RAPID CITY, S.D. – Officials have announced South Dakota’s public health lab has halted COVID-19 testing due to a shortage of supplies.
At an appearance at Monument Health in Rapid City today, Governor Kristi Noem says the lad had to delay testing after running out of supplies both from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and private suppliers.
“We have a shortage on the agents and the enzymes that are utilized to process the test at the state public health lab. We are working with several different suppliers and to get that into the state health lab, hopefully, within hours.”
Noem says they have been requesting these supplies for the past several weeks.
Noem says patients can still be sampled and encourages residents to follow their health care providers advice.
Noem says they ran tests for medium and high risk patients on Monday.
The Department of Health said there is “no timeframe” for when tests will be available due to a nationwide shortage of testing supplies, although Noem was optimistic is could be as early as today.
Due to the shortage of supplies and the delay on testing, there are 350 pending tests and there are no additional positive COVID-19 cases today. The total remained at 11 with one death.
