Testing is the way out of the pandemic

The Rockefeller Foundation makes an essential point in a new report about the coronavirus pandemic. “Testing is the only way out of our present disaster,” the philanthropic organization says, recommending a $75 billion crash program to ramp up diagnostic testing across the country so the sick are identified and the healthy can return to work and school.

Then there is President Donald Trump. Asked about testing in a Fox News interview Sunday, he said, “We’re finding — in a way, we’re creating trouble. Certainly, we are creating trouble for the fake news to come along and say, ‘Oh, we have more cases.’ ”

Mr. President, we have more cases because we have more sickness. In midMay, the United States was recording about 23,000 new cases a day, but after ill-considered, premature reopenings and a virus surge, the daily total reached more than 74,000 on July 17.

A revealing analysis by the health news organization Stat of all 50 states and the District of Columbia shows that in only seven states was the rise in reported cases from mid-May to mid-July driven primarily by increased testing. In 26 states, the case count rose because there was more disease. For example, the number of cases per 1,000 tests, a measure of the disease prevalence, was 32 in Florida on May 13, rising to 75 on June 13 and 193 on July 13.

The jump in hospitalizations reinforces the conclusion that the coronavirus is spreading. Still, Trump ridiculously brushes it off: “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test.”

Diagnostic testing has risen in frequency to about 800,000 tests a day, or more than 5.4 million a week, but this is still far below what’s really needed.

The surge in viral outbreaks has swamped existing testing networks, creating new bottlenecks for supplies such as chemical reagents and equipment, and prolonging the wait for test results for many people to a week or more. That delay can make contact tracing — also vital — practically impossible. The Rockefeller report calls for a massive scale-up of cheap, fast screening tests, say up to 25 million a week, and cutting the processing time for diagnostic testing to 48 hours.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said last weekend, “The national testing scene is a complete disgrace.”

If Trump can’t lift a finger, Congress must. In the next round of stimulus, Congress ought to inject robust new financial support for testing, especially aimed at overcoming the supply chain troubles that are hampering every state trying to act alone, and to support expanded methods such as pooled testing and antigen testing.

In his White House news conference Tuesday, Trump said if medical experts want more testing, “I am OK with it.” The urgency is much greater than the president lets on; a leader would make it happen, not be “OK with it.” Congress should try again to spur a national strategy, enabling and encouraging governors to pick up the slack.

All roads out of this pandemic require more testing. It is time to think big.