According to NBC News
The United States “desperately” needs more tests to screen for the new coronavirus, a public health expert told Congress on Friday.
“Testing capacity is not currently adequate, and we need more,” said Dr. Lisa Maragakis, senior director of infection prevention for the Johns Hopkins Health System and an epidemiologist. “We need this as soon as we can have it.”
Maragakis’ remarks were part of a briefing on Capitol Hill by five experts from Johns Hopkins, which has been tracking the international outbreak.
Around the world, the virus has sickened about 100,000 people and killed more than 3,000. While other countries have run tens of thousands of tests — South Korea has tested more than 100,000 patients — the U.S. has tested barely a fraction of that. Technical glitches and narrow criteria for who could be tested initially hampered the efforts.
The test kit’s technical problems have since been resolved and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines expanded. And while testing capacity has increased, promises made by the Trump administration have yet to come to fruition.
“We have more than 2,500 kits that are being distributed around the country this week that will make more than 1.5 million tests available at hospitals that have requested them, and in areas of the country that have been particularly impacted by the coronavirus,” Vice President Mike Pence, who is overseeing the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus crisis, said during a meeting Wednesday with diagnostic lab CEOs.