https://time.com/5828843/trump-coronavirus-testing-giroir/
President Donald Trump declared Tuesday
that the U.S. will be able to carry out five million coronavirus tests
per day, but the top official overseeing testing strategy told TIME
earlier in the day that goal wasn’t feasible given current technology.
Admiral Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of
health who is in charge of the government’s testing response, said
during an interview on Tuesday morning that “there is absolutely no way
on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million
tests a day, or even five million tests a day.”
Since the beginning of the year, the Administration
has conducted 5.7 million tests in total, he said. And while the
government has made strides in increasing the number of tests being
performed in recent months, the White House’s new “blueprint” for
testing, rolled out on Monday, currently plans to double current
COVID-19 testing. Giroir plans to hit 8 million per month by next month.
On one hand, the usual Trump bluster.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, several rapid tests are in the final stages of development and will soon be ready for deployment, which will massively increase the testing capacity.