Comment by sgw928

The situation is similar in WA state, where the current bottleneck is specimen collection, as there is a shortage of swabs, vials, PPE and personnel. This results in large amount of existing lab capacity, such as at UW Virology labs, not being used. Skipping RNA extraction definitely helps with expanding lab capacity in places where that's the current bottleneck, but isn't the most pressing thing in WA.