US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner claimed the United States is ready to start opening back up amidst the coronavirus epidemic. He suggested the US has all the needed testing, but experts rejected his claim. Kushner informed Fox News on Wednesday morning, and said, “I’m very confident we have all the testing we need to start reopening the country. Everyone’s talking about testing. I have to say the work that’s been done over the last 60 days on testing has been absolutely extraordinary. I think what you’ll see in May as the states are reopening now is May will be a transition month. You’ll see a lot of states starting to phase in the different reopening based on the safety guidelines that President Trump outlined on April 19.”
Kushner added, “I think you’ll see by June that a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again.” He also confirmed the US had conducted more tests for coronavirus by far the most in the world. He said, “We’ve fulfilled all the orders that the governors have, they have excess capacity in their states.” Moreover, US medical experts have said there are nowhere near enough testing kits distributed throughout the country in order to start reopening states. Harvard’s Global Health Institute placed the daily rate of testing needed to reopen the country at 500,000, while the US currently conducts about 150,000 tests per day.
The institute has suggested the US needs to conduct at least 10 to 20 million tests per day in order to avoid a deadlier 2nd wave from potentially sweeping over the country come the fall. The director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, Dr. Asha Jahan said in a statement, “Testing is really at the center of the entire strategy for how we keep the virus at bay as we reopen the economy.” Kushner also pointed out previous claims from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The president of a major trade association, Steve Bahmer said in a statement, “Expanding testing is exactly the right way to go and the only way we get ahead of this. The challenge is, it isn’t enough, especially as we look to reopen the state.”