White House to aid states’ testing
Plan is to help expand response programs
WASHINGTON – The White House unveiled a blueprint on Monday designed to help states expand coronavirus testing and rapid response programs as governors weigh gradually lifting stay-at-home orders and reopening schools and businesses.
The blueprint outlines the federal government’s role in assisting states with access to testing platforms, increasing testing and laboratory supplies as well as enhancing sample collection, according to a copy of the plan reviewed by USA TODAY.
“The testing itself is going really well,” President Donald Trump told reporters at a meeting of retail business leaders in which he discussed aspects of the new testing plan.
Trump also said he discussed testing during a conference call with the nation’s governors and heard “no complaints.”
Under the plan, the Trump administration would send each state enough tests to screen at least 2% of their residents, a number that critics said is too low. Trump aides said states remain responsible for acquiring their own test kits, and many have enough to test higher numbers.
In past weeks, some governors and other critics have attacked the Trump administration for failing to provide a sufficient number of test kits, hurting the efforts of states to track the spread of the virus.
Trump has “pushed sole responsibility to governors while telling them to fly blind without the critical data we derive from testing,” said Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who promoted his own testing plan on Monday.
Earlier this month the White House coronavirus task force issued a threephase plan aimed at helping states determine when to ease restrictions and allow residents to begin returning to work. But critics were quick to point out the broad guidelines lacked details on how states could achieve some of the benchmarks without the availability of widespread testing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is implementing a new program in which “community protection teams” are assisting state and local governments in “performing core public health functions, including epidemiology, monitoring, laboratory analytics, and contract tracing,” according to a copy of the blueprint.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted that Trump would discuss additional testing guidance at a news conference Monday evening.
McEnany’s announcement comes after the president and the task force took a two-day break from holding the daily press briefings on Saturday and Sunday.
The absence of Trump briefings came after he was criticized for suggesting during a briefing Thursday that doctors look at ways to inject heat, light, and disinfectants into the body to somehow kill the virus. Trump made only a brief statement at Friday’s briefing, then left the podium without taking questions.
As Trump and aides debated the value of coronavirus briefings, they canceled a briefing set for Monday before reinstating it hours later.
Though the Trump administration has come under fire for a lack of an organized system for coronavirus testing, senior administration officials said each state needs to conduct its own testing because they have different needs and different health care systems that evaluate diagnostic testing in different ways.
As part of a wider effort to help states access widespread testing, the administration said it is working with diagnostics companies and academic researchers to develop the “next generation” of tests, according to the document.