SAN FRANCISCO, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Castlight
Health, Inc. (NYSE: CSLT) today released a report finding COVID-19
testing sites are distributed unevenly across the country, creating
major gaps in access to coverage based on geography. Retail
clinics, including Walmart and CVS Health, are rallying to meet
that challenge and opening new testing sites to increase
capacity. Especially for localities with gaps in access,
these retail locations could prove the critical difference in
providing the testing capacity needed to safely reopen their
economies.
The analysis finds that while most states appear to have an
adequate number of testing sites overall, many local regions lack
accessible testing capacity to safely reopen their economies and
their communities. The analysis uses Castlight's comprehensive
COVID-19 test site finder, a publicly-available directory with data
from public health departments across the country, provider
systems, and third party sources.
"We know that in order to reopen states' economies and
communities, we need a substantial increase in COVID-19 testing.
Our analysis shows where gaps remain, and how retail clinics, as
they expand testing locations, could hold the key to delivering
critical testing capacity, especially for vulnerable
citizens," said Maeve O'Meara,
CEO of Castlight Health.
Most notably, the analysis found that:
- More than half (54 percent) of America's counties have zero
COVID-19 testing sites.
- 38 percent of metro counties (those with populations greater
than 50,000) and 68 percent of rural counties have no testing sites
at all.
- Even among counties that have testing facilities, 58 percent do
not have enough capacity to meet minimum recommended levels for
their population.
A number of large retailers that have announced plans to open
testing sites nationwide are already operating stores in counties
without adequate testing sites, including CVS, Walgreens, and
Walmart. Due to their broad geographic distribution across urban,
suburban, and rural locations, retail clinics can play a pivotal
role in getting the country back to work by setting up testing
infrastructure where it is needed most. Each retail testing
location is able to collect an average of 200 tests per day, which
could help many counties reach the one percent testing
threshold.
In the absence of a vaccine, quickly identifying COVID-19 cases
with a diagnostic test, tracing close contacts, and isolating those
infected offers the best way to contain the spread of the highly
infectious virus and allow some businesses to resume operations.
Current U.S. testing levels are just over half the pace needed to
meet these goals.
Castlight conducted the analysis using data from its
comprehensive testing site database to understand if states are
equipped to collect the minimum number of tests experts say are
needed—the ability to test 1 percent of their population every
seven days. Castlight looked at the average test collection time,
average number of collection staff per shift, operating hours, and
the average number of days open per week to calculate the average
number of tests different types of collection sites have the
capacity to collect in a day.
Analysis of the Castlight test site finder revealed that 46 out
of the 48 contiguous states have enough testing sites to test 1
percent of their total population each week. Experts have estimated
that between 3 million to 30 million people would need to be tested
per week to begin safely reopening the economy. During the first
week of May, the U.S. averaged only about 260,000 tests per day,
just over half the minimum recommended amount.
Any retailer interested in accessing Castlight's data set can
contact mmoran@castlighthealth.com to learn more.
About Castlight Health
Castlight is on a mission to make it as easy as humanly possible
for its users to navigate the healthcare system and live happier,
healthier, more productive lives. Our health navigation platform
connects hundreds of health vendors, benefits resources, and plan
designs into one comprehensive health and wellbeing experience. We
guide individuals—based on their unique profile—to the best
resources available to them, whether they are healthy, chronically
ill, or actively seeking medical care. Castlight transforms the
employee benefit experience into a deeply personalized, yet simple,
guided one, empowering better-informed patient decisions to unlock
better healthcare outcomes and maximizing return on healthcare
investments.
For more information visit www.castlighthealth.com. Follow us on
Twitter and LinkedIn and Like us on Facebook.
For more information, contact:
Courtney Lamie
press@castlighthealth.com
276-492-4248
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SOURCE Castlight Health, Inc.