Gates, the former CEO and founder of Microsoft, believes that people need to retrieve results sooner in order to “change their behavior and not infect other people.”
“The simplest thing, having to do with that insanity, is that you shouldn’t be reimbursed for testing that it takes more than 48 hours to get the result back,” Gates said Tuesday.
“That test is a complete waste. And to all these numbers about how much we test, most of it is a complete waste,” he added, calling it “crazy” for having to pay for test results that could take more than three days and up to a full week
The United States was slow to implement tests nationwide in the early stages of the pandemic, and experts say response times to results have hampered the country’s ability to slow the spread of the virus.
Admiral Brett Giroir, deputy secretary of health for the United States Department of Health and Human Services, agrees with Gates that the tests should be improved.
Giroir said half of the tests conducted in the US are carried out in large commercial laboratories with an average response time for test results of 4.27 days, saying that “we need to continually improve our ecosystem” .
Giroir said Quest and LabCorp have been authorized to conduct group tests, which will help improve efficiency. Cities where there are outbreaks are also adding surge tests.
The United States administered 733,243 tests on July 28, which is nearly triple the number of tests that were administered near the end of April, according to data from the Covid Monitoring Project.
Gates has donated hundreds of millions of dollars for vaccine treatment and research for Covid-19 through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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