Pence Says U.S. Has Virus Test Capacity for States to Reopen

The Trump administration declared Monday the U.S. has enough laboratory testing capacity for states to begin reopening economies shuttered to fight the coronavirus outbreak, though governors say they still lack supplies such as swabs needed to diagnose sick people.

President Donald Trump and U.S. governors have sparred for days over who is responsible for expanding testing for coronavirus infections, which public health experts say isn’t sufficient to begin relaxing the social-distancing practices adopted to curb the outbreak.

“We told the governors once again today, that by our best estimates, we have enough testing capacity today for every state in America to go to phase one” of the White House’s reopening plan, Vice President Mike Pence said at a news conference. They also need to “meet the other criteria of 14 days of reduced cases and sufficient hospital capacity to prepare for any eventuality that may occur.”

Republican governors in three Southern states -- Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee -- announced Monday that they would lift some social-distancing orders, allowing some businesses and recreation sites to reopen, including South Carolina’s beaches.

Pence also said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would dispatch teams of 10-12 people to each state to help with “contact tracing” -- identifying people who have had contact with the infected and testing them for infection as well.

‘Going Maximum’

Widespread testing is regarded by many public health experts as the linchpin to restarting the economy. To do that, they need to diagnose the sick and detect new outbreaks, as well as identify asymptomatic carriers and people who recovered without knowing they were infected.

Trump, however, has downplayed the necessity of testing.

“Not everyone agrees that we have to do that much testing. We’re going maximum, you understand?” he said at Monday’s news conference. “There are some people that don’t want to do that much testing, but we’re going maximum, we’re going to the outer limits, and I think that’s the way probably it should be.”

In a call with Pence earlier in the day, some governors reiterated concerns about shortages of swabs, reagents and other materials needed to perform tests, telling the vice president it didn’t matter how many lab machines they have in their states if they don’t have sufficient supplies, according to a person familiar with the call. The person asked not to be identified because the call was private.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, said governors expressed “general frustration around some of the testing, the instant testing” that the administration touts as a solution.

Trump said Monday that two of his most vocal critics among the governors -- J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, and Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican -- didn’t understand their own labs.

Many laboratories have been limited by the shortages. Some have had to cobble together different systems so that running out of any one material wouldn’t ground their efforts.

“If I have to have another swab conversation, I’m going to scream,” Melissa Miller, director of the microbiology laboratory at the University of North Carolina Medical Center, said in a phone interview. She’s constantly looking for alternatives, she added.

Puritan Expansion

The administration is finalizing plans to use the Defense Production Act to help bolster the output of swab manufacturer Puritan Medical Products, a closely held company based in Guilford, Maine, according to Peter Navarro, who coordinates use of the law at the White House. Additionally, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late last week began allowing a polyester-based swab similar to a Q-tip to be used to collect Covid-19 samples, an alternative that could help ease supply constraints.

Navarro didn’t say how much funding Puritan would receive. But the goal, he said, is to increase Puritan’s output to more than 20 million swabs a month within 30 days of the contract award, from about 3 million now.

The White House released guidelines last week for states seeking to reopen, but has faced criticism that its plan doesn’t address ramping up testing capacity. In turning to the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration is taking a page out of its strategy on ventilator equipment.

Puritan is one of two major swab producers worldwide. The other big maker of swabs is in Italy, which proved a challenge when the country became a Covid-19 hot spot.

In a pair of tweets Monday, Trump suggested that complaints about testing shortfalls were spurious and again said it was the responsibility of states.

“We’re in very good shape on testing and we’re getting better all the time,” he said at the news conference.

One of his top medical advisers, Deborah Birx, displayed a slide showing that the U.S. inventory of four types of testing machines have the capacity for about 2.1 million tests per day -- though most of that, 1.7 million tests, is from an Abbot Laboratories machine that takes about 15 minutes to run tests one at a time. The U.S. has about 18,000 of the devices.

Polis said at a news conference that there are “two limitations” to an Abbott machine that he didn’t identify but that matched the description of the device in Birx’s slide, called the ID NOW.

“Two limitations on it,” Polis said at the news conference on Monday.

“One, it’s generally believed to have a lower accuracy rate, just to integrate that into how you use it,” he said. “But the bigger one is we simply have plenty of the machines but we don’t have the tests. Only Abbott sells them. It’s proprietary. I think we’ve gotten 200. We need thousands every week.”

He added that “Abbott is not selling them to states. They’re all being bought by FEMA,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Trump’s testing czar, Admiral Brett Giroir, said in an interview earlier this month that they expect Abbott will double production of ID Now tests, and that the administration was also pushing to expand usage of the higher-capacity Abbott m2000 test.

--With assistance from Dina Bass, Justin Sink and Vincent Del Giudice.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Emma Court in New York at ecourt1@bloomberg.net;
Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Drew Armstrong at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net

John Harney

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