United States President Donald Trump faces mounting pressure to approve new federal funding for coronavirus testing as overwhelmed labs struggle to meet demand amid a surge in Covid-19 in many states. .
The delays many Americans face when seeking to know if they have Covid-19, more than four months after the disease began to spread across the country, has resurfaced as a major vulnerability in America’s fight to contain the virus.
He is also given additional ammunition for Democrats to attack Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, at a time when the latest polls show him following Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic presidential candidate, by a wide margin before the election. of November.
“The scene of the national tests is a total disgrace. Therefore, each test we send to private laboratory partners nationwide, Quest, Labcorp, [takes] seven days, eight days, nine days, maybe six days if we are lucky, “Jared Polis, the Colorado Democratic governor, said in an interview with NBC on Sunday.” Almost useless from an epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective, “he added.
Public health experts say a seven-day wait time makes testing virtually useless.
Trump has repeatedly blamed the Covid-19 tests for amplifying the number of cases of the disease in the United States, despite the fact that quick and easily available diagnoses are considered a crucial weapon for health authorities in the pandemic.
“You look at other countries; They don’t even test. They do tests if someone enters the hospital, they are sick, really sick, they examine them at that moment or they will evaluate them in a doctor’s office, “Trump said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.
“But they don’t have large testing areas and we do. And I’m glad we do, but it really skews the numbers. “
Barry Bloom, a professor of public health at Harvard University, said: “When it takes five to seven days to retrieve the test, the person has probably already passed it. The infectious period for the main high-level viral loads is five days. If you don’t isolate them in five days, you will have largely missed the opportunity to prevent them from transmitting. ”
Earlier this week, Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, told the FT. “With the seven-day wait time, you’re basically not testing anything – it’s the structural equivalent of doing zero testing.”
LabCorp and Quest, the largest private laboratory operators, have said they are struggling to cope with a surge in demand for coronavirus testing following the explosion of new cases in several southern and western states.
Companies can process 265,000 combined tests per day, with plans to increase that to 300,000 later this month. However, that is still well below demand at a time when more than 5m of nasal samples are taken each week.
A LabCorp spokesperson said: “Until recently, we have been able to deliver test results to patients on average one to two days from the date of sample collection. But with significant increases in demand for testing and limitations in the availability of supplies. . . The average time to deliver results can now be four to six days from sample collection. For hospitalized patients, the average time to get results is faster. “
A Quest spokesperson said: “Although Quest has increased its enormous capacity and is forwarding samples to our laboratory reference partners to further expand access, the demand for diagnostic tests is growing even faster.”
On Saturday, the US Food and Drug Administration said it would allow Quest to conduct “pooled tests” in an attempt to speed up processing times. The method allows the laboratory to analyze samples from four patients in the same “well” at the same time.
If the pooled sample is negative, all patients without the virus are informed. If the result is positive, laboratory technicians must examine each sample individually.
Democrats on Capitol Hill passed legislation in May that included $ 75 billion in additional funding for testing and contact tracing, and even some Republicans in the Senate have endorsed the idea of additional funding. But according to the Washington Post, the White House has resisted including more money to test and track in the negotiations on a new stimulus package, which is expected to intensify in the coming days on Capitol Hill.
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, suggested in an NBC interview Sunday that the White House position had been disappointing on the subject, but could evolve.
“There is always a sway between the White House and Congress when it comes to the appropriation process. And apparently the initial White House offer was a bit surprising, certainly for many of us who certainly hoped to see more on the path of support, ”Collins said. “But this is one of those things that will unfold in the course of the next few days. Let’s see where it ends, “he added.
On the same show, Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio, said he was “very, very concerned” that his state was “headed in the wrong direction” regarding Covid-19, and that more federal money would be needed for response. sanitary
“We will continue to need money for testing. We have doubled the tests in the last five weeks. Frankly, we have to double it again. We can only do that with money from the federal government. And it has to be for a long period of time. We are not going to be out of this in a month, or two months, or three months, “he said.
The chances of reelection of the President of the United States have been very successful as more Americans have lost confidence in his leadership in the course of the pandemic. According to the Realclearpolitics.com survey average, Biden is leading Trump by 8.6 percentage points nationwide and 5.3 percentage points in changing states. A poll conducted Sunday by the ABC / Washington Post found Biden leading by 15 percentage points among registered voters.
In the interview aired Sunday, Trump insisted he was not “losing,” the polls were “bogus,” and Biden, the former Delaware senator and former vice president of Barack Obama, lacked the competence to be president. “Biden cannot put two sentences together,” he said.
Trump refused to commit to honoring the outcome of the November election.
“I have to see,” said Trump. “I have to see. No, I’m not going to say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t do it the last time either.”
In a bizarre exchange with Chris Wallace, Fox News Sunday host, Trump said he had passed a cognitive test that demonstrated his greater aptitude for work compared to Biden. But Wallace refuted: “Well, it is not the most difficult test. They have a photo and it says” what is that “and it is an elephant.”
Trump replied that Wallace’s description was a “misrepresentation” since the first questions were easy but the last five were difficult.
“Well one of them counted from 100 to seven,” Wallace replied again.
