National testing strategy draws concerns

The Trump administration’s new testing strategy, released Sunday to Congress, holds individual states responsible for planning and carrying out all coronavirus testing, while planning to provide some supplies needed for the tests.

The proposal also says existing testing capacity, if properly targeted, is sufficient to contain the outbreak. But epidemiologists say that amount of testing is orders of magnitude lower than many of them believe the country needs.

The report cements a stance that has frustrated governors in both parties, following the administration’s announcement last month that the federal government should be considered “the supplier of last resort” and that states should develop their own testing plans.

“For months, it was a tennis game. It was going back and forth between the feds and the states, and it’s now landed with the states,” said Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

Becker noted that the federal government plans to distribute some testing supplies, including swabs and viral transport media, and to store test kits in the strategic national stockpile.

“That’s actually quite significant,” he said. “That’s a positive step.”

The Department of

Health and Human Services prepared the strategy, which meets requirements under the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump on April 24, that federal agencies come up with a strategic testing plan within 30 days. It was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

Becker, public-health experts and Democratic leaders panned the proposal, saying the strategy runs the risk of states competing with one another and might create deep inequities among them.

Experts also took issue with the report’s assertion that continuing to test only about 300,000 people a day, by targeting only those likely to be positive, would be enough to contain the outbreak.

“On the face of it, the idea that 300,000 tests a day is enough for America is absurd,” said Dr. Ashish

Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

The proposal also leaves it to states to plan for contact tracing and isolation, rapidly identify new clusters of coronavirus infection and adopt new technologies. It says the federal government is “supporting and encouraging” states to rely heavily on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.