Many sick people in and around New Orleans haven't been able to get tested for the new coronavirus, and their frustrations mounted Thursday amid worries about both the spread of the disease and for some the thought of an unnecessary two-week quarantine.

As of Thursday evening, Louisiana had tested just 64 people for COVID-19, largely because of the paltry number of test kits provided to states by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Earlier in the day, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases acknowledged the government's efforts to track the virus are "failing."

Some estimates suggest that the U.S. can potentially process about 20,000 tests a day at this point. By comparison, South Korea, a country with one-sixth the population of the U.S., is testing 15,000 people a day.

Many Louisianans, including medical professionals, are worried that the testing bottleneck is helping to mask a much wider spread of the coronavirus than has yet been reported. And while most people who spoke to the newspaper said they were taking significant steps to avoid infecting others — despite not knowing if they were sick with the virus — they fear not everyone will be so altruistic.

Person after person described a similar experience: They had at least some of the symptoms associated with COVID-19, from fever to a cough to aches and exhaustion, but were told their condition wasn’t serious enough to warrant the use of one of Louisiana’s precious test kits.

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Among those not tested despite significant symptoms was Maggie Sentilles, of Metairie. Her two young children had both been ill, and on Wednesday, Sentilles came down with a fever of 102, with serious back pain and fatigue.

Because she works as a speech therapist in a public school with a population she described as “medically fragile,” Sentilles thought it was important to rule out coronavirus. When she visited her doctor Thursday morning, he asked a series of questions to better understand her risk — such as whether she had traveled to a country with a high number of cases, which she hadn’t.

He diagnosed her with a virus accompanied by “acute bilateral thoracic pain.”

He also told Sentilles he couldn’t rule out coronavirus, but said apologetically that he was unable to justify testing her — a decision Sentilles said she understands, given the scarcity of the kits. But she fears the inability to screen people like her underscores how ill-prepared Louisiana and the U.S. are for the pandemic.

“I am very concerned that the front lines of community health are not prepared to routinely test for coronavirus,” Sentilles said. “It must be a very extreme case to get the CDC to say yes. … It’s extremely unfortunate because I think we are only aware of a fraction of what we’re dealing with.”

So far, state officials are continuing to use federal criteria that limit tests to three types of people: those who have symptoms and came into close contact with someone confirmed to have COVID-19; those with symptoms and a history of travel to a place affected by the coronavirus; and those with symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization and no other explanation, like the flu.

While just 64 tests had been conducted as of Thursday, state and federal officials said the state’s testing capacity was ramping up, which will inevitably lead to more cases of COVID-19 being discovered here. The CDC gave the state more test kits, and private labs are coming online.

The state Health Department is also doing "community surveillance" tests in New Orleans, where the agency takes samples that have already been gathered for flu tests and tests them for the coronavirus as well. The state's capacity for testing has also increased beyond the 150 to 650 patients it was able to test earlier this week, but it was not clear exactly by how much.

Still, as of now, the state is not able to “test everyone who wants a test,” Gov. John Bel Edwards acknowledged in a joint press conference Thursday with U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams.

Adams said the government can’t use its limited number of tests on anyone with symptoms, and is instead reserving them for people “most at risk.”

“We don’t want to utilize our limited resources testing people willy-nilly,” Adams said.

The resources are limited enough that they have sparked arguments over who should be tested. One New Orleans health care worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described a standoff last week over whether a certain patient’s symptoms were severe enough to warrant a test.

The patient exhibited textbook signs of COVID-19: fever, trouble breathing and signs of viral pneumonia, and had recently traveled to an area of the U.S. with confirmed cases. A CAT scan confirmed lung damage matching case studies of COVID-19 patients from China.

“I highly suspected this was coronavirus,” the worker said.

Nonetheless, it took requests from multiple doctors to get the state to approve the test, the worker said. The test came back negative.

Edwards and other state health officials have defended the federal government’s handling of coronavirus testing, even as the Trump administration is facing backlash — and conceding error — for not providing enough tests to state and local governments.

Responding to frustrated lawmakers’ questions about the lack of testing kits, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, acknowledged on Capitol Hill Thursday that the current system is “failing,” The New York Times reported.

Louisiana officials advised people with possible coronavirus symptoms to contact their health care provider — preferably by phone — to see if they qualify for a test. Doctors call into a state hotline, where Louisiana Department of Health officials walk through their case and decide whether the patient is eligible.

If they do, the doctor swabs the patient and a state courier picks up the sample and brings it to the lab, which is in Baton Rouge near the state Capitol. Lab workers run the test and get a result back several hours later.

Dr. Brobson Lutz, an infectious disease specialist in New Orleans, said the slow pace of testing — along with the failure to test people who aren’t gravely ill — is preventing officials and the public from getting a clear look at the pandemic.

“From an epidemiological standpoint, it’s very important to have people tested also who have minor symptoms,” Lutz said. “Otherwise, you don’t really know what’s going on in this state.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how the new availability of “commercial” testing, through companies like Quest and LabCorp, would widen the pipeline for testing. But until this week, testing was only being done at hospitals working with the state’s lab, and each case required the approval of the CDC.

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The commercial tests can be ordered by doctors at clinics. Though getting results can take four or five days, the threshold for ordering such a test may be slightly less stringent — although similar criteria are being applied.

One woman who works as a server in a well-known, upscale French Quarter restaurant said she was swabbed for the virus after she visited an urgent-care clinic in Metairie on Thursday. The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she was tired and achy but had no fever, though a doctor said he suspected COVID-19 based on other recent patients’ symptoms.

The woman said she had only gone to the clinic because her boss had threatened to fire her if she didn’t present a note from a doctor saying she was too sick to work.

She won’t know whether she has the coronavirus for a couple of days, she said. In the meantime, the doctor told her to collect her 13-year-old daughter from the large, all-girls Catholic school she attends.

The woman said she can ill afford to miss work — she doesn’t get paid sick leave — but she felt it was the only responsible thing to do. She figures some of her colleagues in the city’s hospitality sector will simply try and soldier through because they can’t afford missing work.

Some in the industry are already bracing for a brutal spring, thanks to travel restrictions and convention cancellations.

“Some of my co-workers aren’t gonna stay home” if they’re sick, she said. “They’re gonna go to work.”

Staff writer Emily Woodruff contributed to this report.