A Coronavirus test site volunteer gives directions to people waiting in line, Los Angeles, California, July 10, 2020 (Fredric Brown/AFP/Getty)
Coronavirus testing slows in the US, even as the pandemic surges in many states and deaths near 170,000.
For the first time since the outbreak in January, the number of daily tests has fallen. In August, it is about 733,000 people, compared to almost 750,000 in July. The seven-day test average dropped to 709,000 on Monday, the lowest in nearly a month, before a small increase by Friday. Twenty states recorded declines.
Experts explain that a high rate of testing is essential for any effort to trace, track, and contain the virus. Some assess that, with US daily cases increasing by a record of almost 80,000 per day last month and still close to 60,000, up to 4 million tests per day are needed.
But as Donald Trump oersists in the falsehood that the US has the highest rate of testing in the world, the Federal Government’s approach has been marked by a lack of resources, coordination, and even acknowledgement of the issue.
In March, the White House circumvented agencies and instead handed the program to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Procurement of tests was pursued by Kushner’s handpicked group of young business associates, including his former college roommate. The initiative soon fell apart amid faulty test kits, dodgy invoices, and — allegedly — the team’s assessment that Coronavirus was hitting “blue” Democratic states much harder than “red” Republican ones.
On Saturday, US deaths rose to 169,481, with 1,035 in 24 hours. Confirmed cases are 5,361,165, an increase of 47,844.
“Don’t Get Hung Up on A Number”
Adm. Brett Giroir, the Administration’s head of testing, pushed aside the issue on Thursday.
He acknowledging that, under the current system, millions of tests was not realistic. However, in defiance of medical and public health evaluations, he said 220,000 tests per day were sufficient to deal with “hot spots”.
“We are doing the appropriate amount of testing now to reduce the spread, flatten the curve, save lives,” he told reporters.
Giroir continued, “You do not beat the virus by shotgun testing everyone all the time. Don’t get hung up on a number.”
Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, offered a far different view: “There is a reasonable disagreement about what that number ought to be, but all of them are way ahead of where we are right now. There is no expert that I know of that thinks that our testing infrastructure right now meets the needs of the American people.”
The World Health Organization defines control of Coronavirus’s spread as widespread testing with a positive rate of less than 5%.
In July, parts of the US such as Arizona returned positive rates of more than 20%. Last week, Texas reached 24%, as daily tests fell from 67,000 in July to as low as 35,000 this month.
Experts assess that up to $75 billion in additional federal funding is needed for adequate testing. But on August 7, the Administration cut off negotiations with Democratic leaders on a compromise $2 trillion Coronavirus relief package which included $16 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing.
Trump Talks College Football
Trump has repeatedly complained that more testing means more confirmed cases, which “makes us look bad”.
He told Axios’ Jonathan Swan earlier this month, “There are those that say you can test too much.” Asked by Swan who says that, Trump replied, “Manuals. Books….I read a lot.”
In his daily White House appearance on Saturday, Trump repeated his falsehoods about the state of the pandemic.
Opening with his standard racial slur for Coronavirus, he asserted:
Nearly 85% of jurisdictions all across our country are reporting a very steep decline in cases. And that’s despite the fact that we have the #1 testing program anywhere in the world. We’re up to almost 70 million tests, far beyond any other country.
In defiance of the fall in testing, he proclaimed, “Millions of point-of-care tests are processed in less than 24 hours and many in under 15 minutes.”
Trump focused on “I want college football to come back”, speaking at length about a prominent quarterback, Trevor Lawrence of Clemson University. He then lost the thread completely and completing about athletes who kneel in support of demonstrations about racial and social issues.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, the GOP nominee for President in 2012, evaluated:
Short term, I think it’s fair to say we really have not distinguished ourselves in a positive way by how we responded to the crisis when it was upon us. And the proof of the pudding of that is simply that we have 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s deaths due to covid-19.”
And there’s no way to spin that in a positive light.
