The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was asked at a congressional hearing on Thursday who was in charge of making sure that people can be tested for Covid-19, especially health care workers.
Was it he, the vice president or someone else?
Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C. director, replied that his responsibility was only to ensure that state public health laboratories have access to the test. Pressed further, he said he would look into who was in charge.
If he didn't know, that's a problem. On Friday morning, President Trump took a belated but welcome step by designating Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health, to be responsible for the government's testing response.
There's no reason the testing infrastructure can't be up and running in seven days so that every person in America who needs a test can be tested. The president should demand it.
The state health labs that Dr. Redfield is responsible for represent only a fraction of the testing capacity in the United States. But that capacity is expanding every day. It includes university, private, research, state public health and federal laboratories.
Here's what the federal government needs to do to take full advantage of that growing capacity:
First, the president's testing chief should work with the governors of each state to coordinate testing at all laboratories with capacity and push for the expansion of testing capability where possible.
Then, the Defense Department and the U.S. Public Health Service should be enlisted to work with governors to set up mobile specimen collection units throughout the country, staffed with medics, giving priority to areas most affected. First priority for testing should be given to hospitals, nursing homes and health care workers.
The testing chief should recruit FedEx, Amazon, the United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service to coordinate the safe transfer of all specimens from the mobile collection sites to the laboratories.
Big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Salesforce should be brought into the effort to work with testing laboratories to set up a data management system to handle the flow of specimens and the resulting information, including the delivery of results to patients and their doctors.
The testing chief should also coordinate with the C.D.C., the American Medical Association, the Infectious Diseases Society and the American Nurses Association to give clear guidance to the public on who should be tested, what the test means and what steps should follow if the test is positive.
Seven days. That's what it should take to bring the badly lagging United States up to speed in its battle against the fast-spreading virus.
(Disclosure: Former Vice President Joe Biden recently asked me to join a group of experts to advise him on the coronavirus situation. This is not a partisan issue, and I have worked for both Republican and Democratic presidents.)
David A. Kessler, M.D., is a professor of epidemiology, biostatistics and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, from 1990 to 1997. New York Times, March 13, 2020.
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March 13, 2020
Voices4America Post Script. Read! Share! A former head of the FDA lays out a 7 day plan of how to get us all tested. We would know how to isolate & care for those who carry the virus even if symptom-free. Can we count on this Trump admin to duck this up too! #RememberInNovember
#WashYourHands
