How Covid Testing Problems Contribute to Pandemic

FEATURING ZOË MCLAREN – President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that the US is conducting more tests for Covid-19 than other nations in the world. He has also insisted that the numbers of infections in the US are so high because the US is doing so much testing and that if testing were to slow down, so would infections.

Testing is a critical part of the tool kit for bringing the pandemic under control and the President’s misinformation on the issue—or misunderstanding of it—has hampered efforts. The resulting patchwork approach to testing state by state has left some parts of the nation reeling with new infections. Many test sites are not able to return test results in a timely manner. Meanwhile Congress has appropriated billions more to funding testing in the latest Covid-relief bill but it not clear how the funds will be used if the bill passes into law.

Read Zoë McLaren’s article for TheConversation.com, called “Making coronavirus testing easy, accurate and fast is critical to ending the pandemic – the US response is falling far short,”   HERE.

Zoë McLaren is Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland.