Dr. Anthony Fauci affirms the US to double its COVID-19 Testing Capacity

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On Saturday, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he is confident the United States will be able to double its coronavirus testing capacity over the next few weeks. He also stressed it is essential to safely reopen portions of the US economy. Fauci said the U.S is currently averaging between 1.5 million and 2 million tests per week. He said, “We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will. Testing is an important part of what we’re doing, but it is not the only part.” There is a number of leading US health officials emphasizing the United States must have widespread testing availability and a significant amount of contact-tracing program in place prior to start reopening the States.

Dr. Fauci said this system is essential in order to prevent another outburst. He said, “You need enough tests so when you’re doing what we’re trying to do right now, which is trying to ease our way back, that you can very easily identify, test, contact trace and get those who are infected out of society so they don’t infect others.” Fauci also said that positive test results should account for less than 10% of tests administered. He said the high rates of positive results generally indicate that not enough individuals are getting tested. Trump earlier said during the recent months that the U.S had reached the testing capacity to allow states to start gradually reopening once they experience a consistent drop in COVID-19 cases over a period of 14 days.

It is noteworthy that the comments were met with the pushback from some governors. Maryland Gov. for instance, Larry Hogan (Chairman of the National Governors Association) said that the statement was absolutely false. Last week, Dr. Fauci also said in an interview with Time Magazine that the United States needed to significantly ramp up its testing capacity. He said, “We’re doing better and I think we’re going to get there, but we’re not there yet.” He said it is more important to ensure you have enough tests to respond to the outbursts that will inevitably happen as you try and ease your way back into the different phases.