One month after Trump declared a national emergency and announced commitments from some of the nation's largest companies to help expand testing capabilities in the U.S., most regions still lack access to the necessary tests and equipment they require
One month after President Trump declared a national emergency and announced commitments from some of the nation's largest companies to help expand testing capabilities in the U.S., most regions still lack access to the necessary tests and equipment they require.
The reality has fallen far short of those expectations. Google was not responsible for the development of the triage tool that the president described. The development effort was undertaken by another subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet, and had completed 3,700 tests by the end of March. The company was able to set up four testing sites across California in two weeks.
In fact, the speed of testing lags across the country in both state and private facilities, in part because only the people who are presenting with severe COVID-19 symptoms are getting tested for the disease. Just today the Los Angeles Times reported that New York may run out of the testing swabs it needs. “It’s still an atmosphere of tremendous scarcity,” the Times quoted Mayor Bill de Blasio saying. “I spoke with the president and other key members of the administration … this is the crucial need.”
Quest, LabCorp and the lobbying group that represents them in Washington have approached the White House about providing more support to increase their ability to test people who are potentially infected, according to an NPR report. "The capacity to conduct rapid diagnostic testing for everyone with COVID-19 symptoms and those with exposures or at higher risk of contracting or transmitting the virus , with a robust sentinel surveillance system that routinely monitors for infection among samples of the population to enable early identification of small outbreaks, particularly in vulnerable populations," is the first step of any successful containment plan, according to the study.
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