DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa is dropping one of the two methods it used to test for coronavirus after reports that more than half of the hospital’s samples were unusable, a hospital spokesman said.

Samples from Tuscaloosa and many testing sites in the state are sent to the Alabama Department of Public Health lab in Montgomery, which conducts the actual tests. The ADPH said 528 of the 1,043 samples from Tuscaloosa this week could not be processed because they were insufficient or spoiled, according to Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox.

The hospital is working on informing people, but is not able to contact the hundreds of individuals whose samples were not tested.

The hospital had used two different methods to test for coronavirus: sputum samples and swabs inserted into the nose. For sputum samples, a patient coughs to produce phlegm or mucus, which is collected and analyzed, but if those samples don’t have enough material, the lab cannot run the tests.

Hospital spokesman Andy North said sputum samples that did not contain enough material were the main reason so many samples could not be used.

“That’s the majority of what happened with our samples,” North said.

North said that visually screening the sputum samples at the collection site proved challenging because of the personal protective equipment used by the healthcare workers, and that from now on the hospital will only conduct swab tests. North said supplies of swab test kits are “critically low.”

The hospital expects its current supply of swab kits will run out early next week, but is making an “extensive effort” to get more. In the meantime, DCH will only test patients who are displaying symptoms of coronavirus.

“As long as we’re able to do swab tests, we’ll do them,” North said.

North said patients who were screened can log onto their DCH medical records portal to see whether their sample was processed. Results from the tests will be available after about five days. He said the hospital is trying to find a way to notify patients whose samples were not processed, and that some doctors had begun doing that on an individual basis, but the hospital did not have the capacity to notify everyone whose test was unusable.

He said if a patient’s symptoms persist, they can contact their doctor to discuss getting re-tested. The hospital recommends anyone experiencing symptoms practice social distancing for at least 14 days.

DCH is continuing to offer drive-up screening for coronavirus Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., as long as the hospital’s swab test supplies last.

Maddox tweeted on Friday that 528 of the 1043 samples sent from DCH to the Alabama Department of Public Health for testing were “not sufficient or spoiled." Maddox said just 40 tests from Tuscaloosa had been processed, one of them positive for COVID-19. The other 475 samples were still being processed as of Friday.

Alabama now reported 124 confirmed coronavirus cases in 21 counties as of 10:20 a.m. Saturday. Four of the 124 were residents of Tuscaloosa County.