The Indiana primary is scheduled June 2.
Amid reports that there aren’t enough COVID-19 tests for individuals in the state of Indiana who have symptoms, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate has come under fire for his own COVID-19 test in April.
Dr. Woody Myers has repeatedly lamented the limited availability of COVID-19 tests, but Politico contributing editor Adam Wren (@adamwren) tweeted an item April 22:
“Scoop: Indiana Democratic gubernatorial candidate @DrWoodyMyers will get tested for coronavirus at @ZakKhanAria's north side Aria Diagnostics lab tomorrow to make the case that the state should be doing more testing.”
On April 23, Wren tweeted:
“On Wednesday, Indiana Democratic gubernatorial candidate @DrWoodyMyers announced that he would be taking a coronavirus test. Then, his [communications] director said he had no symptoms. Today, Myers said he had symptoms. "Things change every day," his director says.”
The Indiana primary is scheduled for June 2.
There is confusion as to whether Myers had symptoms that required testing, and Wren is not the only individual who has taken issue with the candidate having a test and being photographed while doing so.
Wren noted that Thomas Cook, chief of staff for Indianapolis’ mayor, who is also a Democrat, commented on Myers’ being photographed while being tested, responding to a tweet from Niki Kelly, a reporter for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. That tweet string looked like this:
Thomas Cook @thomascarlcook wrote:
“I guess we now know the answer as to what it would have been like if instead of just hopping on the tank, Michael Dukakis had decided to fire it repeatedly at the DNC headquarters.”
Kelly’s quoted tweet from April 23 included a photo of an individual getting a COVID-19 swab.
@nkellyatJG:
“Democrat gubernatorial candidate Dr. Woody Myers gets a COVID test. He wouldn't say what his symptoms are and won't provide his result when it is done.”
This comes after Myers spoke out multiple times about the need for more testing and better access to COVID-19 tests.
In a March 26 town hall held on Facebook, Myers spoke about the importance of working to rapidly increase the number of tests available.
“So I’m very concerned, and as are most others, that we follow basic public health principles by testing, quarantine, and isolation, as much as we can for as many as we can, for as long as we need to, in order to minimize the –that the spike in the curve, flatten that curve, such that people can get the care that they need from the physicians, nurses, hospitals, and others that are providing it,” he said. “In order to do that, we’ve got to rapidly increase the number of tests that are available and the speed of time when you get the results of those tests. I know that health care professionals are frustrated nationwide by the paucity of testing kits that are out there. They’ve got patients that have symptoms that need to be tested, but they’re finding it difficult to get them tested.”
He also expressed concern that the test was being restricted to individuals who were hospitalized, primarily because the state didn’t have enough tests or test kits.
“And the way to test for it, there are two basic kinds of tests," Myers said. "There’s the diagnostics test that is available today, in fact it is underutilized in some labs and not available in others. There’s been such a lack of leadership nationally and I would dare say at the state level as well, to organize testing in a way that made some sense so that all who needed access to it could get it when they needed it, almost on demand.”
Following his April 23 test, Myers told the Herald Bulletin that he would not discuss his symptoms, which he described as mild but under control.
“I’m not one of the more symptomatic people…but I thought it would be a good idea” to be tested,” Myers told the paper. “We want to make sure that as testing ramps up, it ramps up in all communities throughout the state- not just in the more affluent communities but certainly in urban areas of the state and rural.”