The United States needs to ramp up testing for the coronavirus as the White House considers when and how to lift stay-at-home restrictions and lockdowns triggered by the pandemic, U.S. health experts said on Sunday, Reuters informs.
More than 2 million tests have been done in the country so far, but the tests are not available to many who need them, said Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
“We need to do more, no question about that,” Hahn said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The lack of adequate testing has hampered the U.S. response to the pandemic, which has killed more than 21,600 people in the country and infected more than half a million.
President Donald Trump last week played down the importance of testing, saying, “It’s not necessary but it would be a good thing to have.”
Top experts on the White House coronavirus task force have made it clear testing is important, however, particularly as the country takes its first steps toward reopening, a move the Republican president has said he wants to make as soon as possible.
The governors of New York and New Jersey, as well as the mayor of hard-hit New York City, pleaded for more test kits and testing capability on Sunday.
“Further ramping up testing, both diagnostic as well as the antibody tests, will really be necessary as we move beyond May and into the summer months and then into the fall,” Hahn said.
Diagnostic testing determines if somebody is infected with the virus and antibody testing shows who has been infected and is therefore immune. Both will be important in getting people back into the workplace and containing the virus as that happens, the experts said.
“When one starts to relax some of those restrictions, we know that there will be people who will be getting infected. I mean, that is just reality,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”. “The critical issue is to be able to, in real time, identify, isolate and contact trace. That’s called containment.”
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