Rochester Regional Health is trying to answer some of the many questions surrounding COVID-19 testing.

Two leading doctors at the medical facility explain the process there and express frustration at not being able to test more people.

“We would like to test more patients. We would like to increase capacity," said Rochester General Hospital Director of Microbiology, Dr. Roberto Vargas.

We also spoke with Rochester General Hospital Chief of Pathology & Lab Medicine, Dr. Dawn Riedy, who says, “We and our staff have worked continuously since March 14th. Nobody’s taken a day off.”

Rochester General Hospital’s lab was one of the first in the region to begin conducting in-house COVID-19 testing.

“I know it’s frustrating for the public and I don’t think the public understands what the limitation is. And why can’t we be producing more results faster and more of them? It’s because we don’t have the reagents," said Dr. Riedy.

“The frustration isn’t with the governor or the state of New York, it’s actually with the process. There’s an internal obscure process of allocation of reagents and we’re being shut out of it. And it’s a problem because we are working very, very hard to test as many patients as we can and it’s not enough," said Dr. Vargas.

Reagents are a critical ingredient needed in the COVID-19 testing process and are in short supply.

“And if we had access to these reagents, we would be able to test all the patients that we need to test here in the community, instead of having to come up with some kind of high priority list and all these complex processes to try to determine who needs it most," said Dr. Vargas.

Right now, RGH has the capacity to run 88 tests per day. Those in-house test results come back in about 14 hours. But other tests are sent to commercial labs for processing, leaving a much longer wait time for results.

“We know it's frustrating for the community. And it's heartbreaking. I mean it's just, we are trying to do the right thing. We know patients are frustrated when it takes days to get the results back. There are patients who were tested the middle of last week who don't have the results back yet," said Dr. Riedy.

Dr. Vargas says it’s rationing health care, "I don't like turning people away that otherwise we will test, and we are put in that position and it's really, really uncomfortable.”

Dr. Riedy says this is a very stressful time for staff at RGH, “The pace of this is crushing and the dedication of the staff is, they’re all heroes, I call the microbiology lab here the dream team."

Rochester Regional Health is actively pursuing ways to increase its testing capacity, that includes appeals to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

In the meantime, staff at RGH is working 24/7 to help meet the needs of our community.