Delaware is distributing rapid COVID-19 antigen tests to pediatric primary care providers.
Delaware received more than 77,500 COVID-19 antigen tests from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and expects to receive a couple hundred thousand more.
The state is giving many of these tests out to pediatric care providers, including about 3,000 to the Delaware Children’s Health Network.
Jamie Clarke is the network’s Executive Director and Chief Value Officer at Nemours. She says testing was previously unavailable among the network’s primary care providers.
“We really needed a point of care option so that if a child is in the office as we have them that they actually don’t have to be referred out and have to go and get a test elsewhere,” Clarke.
Children up to the age of 17 are the least likely age group to test positive for COVID in Delaware.
The first flu case in the state this season was confirmed earlier in the week in a child under the age of five. Clarke says the tests come just in time with the start of flu season.
“Our clinicians need to have the tools and resources to be able to identify the symptoms that show themselves as COVID, but also many other viruses to be able to differentiate that,” said Clarke. “So that if a child is positive, that we can appropriately counsel the family for either isolation or quarantine, if the child is positive, and hopefully doing our part to help reduce the community spread.”
The Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 point-of-care antigen cards can diagnose COVID-19 infection in as little as 15 minutes.
The federal government also shipped more than 23,000 of the tests directly to Delaware long-term-care facilities.
