Hospitals and pharmacies in Connecticut are warning that it may take longer to receive COVID-19 test results as cases surge in other parts of the country.

If you call the CVS in Gales Ferry — one of 27 CVS testing sites in Connecticut, and one of three in New London County —  to check on results from a recent test, you'll be instructed to check online or call the MinuteClinic call center.

An automated message at the call center states, "There is currently an extremely high demand for COVID-19 tests, due to the increase in cases in certain parts of the country. This has caused backlogs for our lab partners who are responsible for processing the samples collected at CVS locations. As a result, it may take six to 10 days for people to receive their results."

Dr. James Cardon, chief clinical intervention officer for Hartford HealthCare, said in an email that Hartford HealthCare has seen an increase in the turnaround time for results of routine tests from asymptomatic people, "largely due to the prioritization of lab capacity being directed to help areas of the country in crisis."

He suggests that people plan ahead and get tested seven to 10 days before they need results, to ensure plans are not disrupted.

"In this moment in time, we need to prioritize our testing to ensure we can care for those individuals where timing is critical," Cardon said, adding that Hartford HealthCare continues to meet turnaround times of one to three days for symptomatic and pre-operative patients.

He said Hartford HealthCare has provided 116,000 tests to date through a partnership with Quest Diagnostics.

In a media statement posted Monday, Quest said the turnaround time for hospital patients, pre-operative patients, and symptomatic health care workers is one day, but the average wait for all other populations is now seven days. Quest relies on the health care provider to indicate the priority level for each patient.

The statement said Quest doubled its testing capacity from eight weeks ago to 125,000 diagnostic tests per day, and expects to have a capacity of 150,000 tests a day by the end of July.

Quest spokesperson Kim Gorode told The Day that specimens are not necessarily sent to the closest lab but to labs around the country where there may be more capacity. She said Quest has not received any government guidance about prioritizing tests from certain regions.

The Quest statement said global supply constraints are a limitation for adding capacity, but the company is working on technology upgrades and "also considering additional partners for our lab referral program, through which we forward specimens we receive to other laboratories with open capacity."

One company that could take more specimens is the Montville-based Genesys Diagnostics. Dinesh Ahuja, vice president of marketing, said by phone Wednesday that Genesys is currently testing 500-700 samples per day but has the capacity to do 3,000-5,000.

Ahuja said Genesys mostly tests specimens from Connecticut, but also does testing for New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.

He said he wants to help in states where cases are spiking and has called places in Arizona and Texas to see if they want Genesys' help but hasn't heard back.

Genesys has a contract with the state of Connecticut, which also has contracts with the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Sema4 in Branford, Hartford Hospital and Yale New Haven Health Services.

Ahuja lamented that some care providers seem to be leaning on large companies like Quest rather than small local businesses like Genesys. He would like Genesys to do testing for universities in the state.

Fiona Phelan, spokesperson for Lawrence + Memorial Hospital and Westerly Hospital, said in an email that turnaround times for tests are "dynamic and based on several factors including national testing supply availability, performance of local testing platforms, and the various reasons for testing. The recent increase in national cases has placed a significant stress on testing supplies and we are working to ensure that adequate testing is available for our patients and health care workers."

She said all testing for Yale New Haven Health is done at labs in the system's hospitals and that Yale New Haven Health has tested more than 100,000 people to date.

Franklin resident Maura Casey told The Day that when she made some calls Monday about getting a test for a symptomatic family member, she was stunned by the estimated wait times, given the shorter wait times she was hearing about last week.

"Every place I called around Norwich was saying they would take seven to eight days," Casey said, noting she heard this from testing sites run by CVS, Yale New Haven Health and Hartford HealthCare.

In response to an inquiry from The Day on Facebook, one person did note that her daughter got tested Monday at UConn and had results within 24-30 hours. Among several others who responded, most who got tested last month said they got their results in two days or less, though one person said it took seven days.

e.moser@theday.com