Public health officials in California's state capital region announced this week they have stopped tracing the contacts of patients diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. They've also ceased recommending quarantines for residents exposed to people confirmed to have the virus.

It was a grim recognition of the virus' infiltration — and is yet another sign of the detrimental effects of a lack of capability in the U.S. to test people for the deadly coronavirus as it continues to spread.

"The reason we have to move on is because testing did not occur. We're still able to do about 20 tests a day," said Dr. Peter Beilenson, director of Sacramento County's Department of Health Services. "If you really wanted to quarantine and contain the situation, you would have wanted to know who was positive and quarantine them. Because we never had the tests, it's kind of a moot point, and the horse is out of the barn." Sacramento County — which as of Friday had 17 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including one death — instead has begun advising residents to use so-called social distancing measures as a primary response. That includes asking people and businesses to cancel large gatherings, warning older people and those with chronic conditions to avoid crowds, and begging the general public to practice good hygiene.

The move is part of a shift from containment — where the goal is to track every case of the disease and end its spread — to mitigation, which focuses on protecting the most vulnerable from the effects of a disease that is already widespread throughout the community. County residents with any sort of illness are being asked to self-isolate until several days after symptoms resolve.

"Our goal is to be much more surgical in our approach to prevent the spread to seniors," Beilenson said.

Sacramento County's difficult decision to change course comes even as the director-general of the World Health Organization has said that it's "wrong and dangerous" for countries to shift from containment to mitigation at this point in the pandemic. "Countries that decide to give up on fundamental public health measures may end up with a larger problem, and a heavier burden on the health system that requires more severe measures to control," said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The U.S. has not made that shift as a whole, but experts say it's concerning that some areas of the country have had to move away from the basic public health protocols of contact tracing and quarantine in response to the federal government's botched rollout of coronavirus test kits.

"Every tool should still be on the table," said Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor of global health at Harvard University. "We should not give up on containment. It's a very big challenge ahead, but I feel like we are starting to make progress as a country, and if we do an all-of-the-above strategy, there's a pretty good chance we're going to get through this without too much harm to our population." King County in Washington state, which has been an early epicenter for the virus in the U.S., shifted from contact tracing as well, but still requires a 14-day quarantine for people who were exposed to someone with the virus. Yolo and Placer counties in California also have shifted to a mitigation approach, though the details vary.