Coronavirus testing troubles persist as patients are turned away, even as lab capacity in Seattle expands

She started coughing on a Sunday, woke with a fever the following Monday, and by that afternoon, Alex Leuzzi was trying to get her doctors to test her for coronavirus.

But her doctors, in a phone call from the Swedish Medical Center clinic in Bellevue, informed Leuzzi “that because my fever wasn’t 100.4 degrees, they weren’t able to test me. I was only at 100 degrees.”

If she had difficulty breathing, her doctors advised, Leuzzi, 36, should go to an emergency room. Otherwise, stay home.