U.S. Falls Just Short of May Virus Testing Goal With 12 Million

(Bloomberg Law) -- The Trump administration came up shy of meeting its goal of doing about 12.9 million tests in May.

Brett Giroir, a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who has overseen the administration's efforts to ramp up testing, said Wednesday that the country did about 12 million tests last month.

Meanwhile, data from a volunteer-led initiative to tally Covid-19 data called the Covid Tracking Project has the U.S. doing just 10.4 million tests last month.

U.S. Covid-19 testing capabilities have significantly expanded since the pandemic's early days, but still are only roughly half the 900,000 daily tests called for by public health experts.

Mass testing is essential to understanding the virus's spread and quelling outbreaks, but the Trump administration has largely batted responsibilities for testing to the states.

After criticism about that approach, particularly in the face of shortages of key testing supplies, the administration last month agreed to provide some testing materials to help states meet May testing goals.

Shortages Alleviated in Some Areas

Shortages of testing supplies have been alleviated in some parts of the country but not across the board, laboratory directors say.

“I no longer have nightmares about shortages for now,” said Susan Butler-Wu, an associate professor at USC's Keck School of Medicine and director of a clinical microbiology lab in Los Angeles County. But friends and colleagues in other states are facing “piddly shipments of swabs,” she said.

One of those colleagues is Amanda Harrington, an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago and medical director of its clinical microbiology lab.

“We cannot get access to swabs. I do not understand where they're going,” she said in an interview May 21. “I don't know the answer. All I know is I can't get them.”

Giroir said the federal government plans to send states up to 20 million swabs and 20 million tubes of the fluid used to transport swabs for testing in May and June.

Its plan is to provide states 100 million of each through at least December, but the administration has yet to finish the contract for those supplies, he added.

The administration is also working with testing supply manufacturers to understand their inventory over the next six months, Tammy Beckham, director of the HHS Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, said on Wednesday's call with Giroir and reporters.

Responding to criticism that the federal government hasn't sufficiently combated testing supply shortages, Giroir said that “not every state can get every single type of reagent they want.”

Supplies of reagent for a popular Cepheid test, for instance, are limited to 1.2 million to 1.5 million a month and as such are being allocated to areas that “absolutely depend on that,” he said.

Giroir said there is enough testing machine capacity, and reports of machine shortages are “false.”

“It is true that everyone would like to buy with their new federal money a brand new shiny Hologic Panther machine,” he said. “Hopefully by the fall, there'll be more and more Panther machines, more and more reagents, so people can get exactly what they want. But right now they're getting what they need.”

Giroir's Role

Giroir also said he will continue to be involved in testing strategy, just in a lesser capacity as the work transitions from FEMA to the HHS.

He said his remarks Monday about returning to his regular duties were misunderstood. At the time, he said he expected to be “demobilized” in mid-June.

“I would like to clarify that I am still deeply engaged with Covid-19 testing efforts, and I intend to remain involved in this space for as long as necessary,” he said. “Many of the day-to-day management of operations of testing are now in the process of being transitioned to HHS.”

Bloomberg reported in April that FEMA was in discussions to hand over its Covid-19 lead responsibilities to another federal agency.

To contact the reporters on this story: Shira Stein in Washington at sstein@bloomberglaw.com, Emma Court in New York at ecourt1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fawn Johnson at fjohnson@bloomberglaw.com; Brent Bierman at bbierman@bloomberglaw.com

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