AUSTIN, Texas _ Federal officials are developing plans for a "blitz" of testing in Texas and other states to find young adults who have no symptoms and may be unknowingly spreading the coronavirus.
The effort would target people under age 35 in "moderate sized" communities, which have not yet been named.
"The strategy would be to surge test," Admiral Brett Giroir, the Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a press call Wednesday.
"You would do the number of tests you do in a month in just a few days, to try to make sure we identify these asymptomatics and get a better handle on them."
The department is currently in discussions with state health officials in Texas, Florida and Louisiana, Giroir said.
The announcement comes as new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are surging in Texas to their highest levels since the epidemic began. On Tuesday the state reportedly nearly 7,000 positive cases, a new record.
People under age 35 are driving up the case counts and many likely have mild symptoms or none at all, Giroir said.
More than half the cases reported in Dallas County since June 1 have been diagnosed in young adults between the ages of 18 and 39, public health officials said.
In an effort to slow the spread, Gov. Greg Abbott shut down bars last week and also reduced the capacity at restaurants to 50%. In mid-June, he scolded 20-year-olds for not wearing masks or following social distancing guidelines. While some cities and counties are now requiring masks inside businesses, Abbott has not mandated that everyone wear one in public.
It is not clear when the testing surge would begin, who would be targeted or how officials would ensure compliance. The Texas Division of Emergency Management confirmed the state is working with federal officials to increase testing in Texas and said more details will be coming soon.
Abbott's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Demand for coronavirus testing has surged in recent weeks and is challenging labs' ability to keep up. In Dallas County, some test results are taking a week or more to come back. Any delays in results make it harder to track down others who may have come into contact with an infected person.
Giroir said doing contract tracing on large numbers of asymptomatic, young adults is difficult.
"That is different than going into a meat packing plant or to a factory where somebody has a sickness and you know who they ate lunch with, who's on that assembly line," he said. "So it's a different situation."
The state has already undertaken efforts to surge test in nursing homes, meat packing plants and jails _ all known breeding grounds for the virus.
While young adults are less likely than older people to develop severe cases of COVID-19, they still can. At least two dozen people under age 40 have died from the disease, according to state data. But that's likely an undercount because the current data captures information for less than 30% of the state's 2,424 deaths to date.
