National Public Radio reports that to safely phase out social distancing measures, the U.S. needs more diagnostic testing for the coronavirus, experts say. But how much more?
The Trump administration said on April 27 the U.S. will soon have enough capacity to conduct double the current amount of testing for active infections. The country has done nearly 248,000 tests daily on average in the last seven days, according to the nonprofit Covid Tracking Project. Doubling that would mean doing around 496,000 a day.
Will that be enough? What benchmark should states try to hit?
And keep in mind, testing is but one leg of the ladder of recovery. The other is contact tracing. Is your community doing enough of that? We doubt it. That’s why Bio-Defense Network has created a nationwide cadre of public health, nursing, allied health and other university students and grads to conduct remote tracing.