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Americans will have access to more than 2,000 labs for coronavirus testing, Pence says


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Americans will have access to more than 2,000 labs for coronavirus testing, Pence says

 

2020-03-15T215620Z_1_LYNXMPEG2E107_RTROPTP_4_HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-PENCE.JPG

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the government's coronavirus task force, addresses the press following a tour of the 3M company headquarters in Maplewood, Minnesota, U.S. March 5, 2020. REUTERS/Nick Pfosi

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence promised on Sunday that Americans would have access in the days ahead to more than 2,000 laboratories capable of processing coronavirus tests, and a leading expert said the country would launch a new phase of testing for the fast-spreading disease.

 

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Pence also said he and President Donald Trump would brief U.S. state governors on Monday on the widening testing amid a fast-escalating global health crisis.

 

The Trump administration has faced criticism in recent weeks for what has widely been seen as a slow gearing up of testing for the coronavirus.

 

With limited testing available, U.S. officials have recorded nearly 3,000 cases and 62 deaths, and large segments of daily activities have been upended across the country. Globally, more than 162,000 people are infected and over 6,000 have died.

 

U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Brett Giroir said the United States may have 1.9 million "high-throughput" tests available this week.

 

"That is a real game changer for us," Giroir said of the increased number of testing labs due to come on line.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the nation's top infectious diseases expert, said the United States was moving into a new phase of testing.

 

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

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-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-03-16
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Testing: "The test itself, by the way, is not perfect. The swab may not be taken in the right way, and sometimes it turns up negative. The throat swab turns up positive quite a lot of the time. But it's a false negative some of the time. Sputum is much more accurate, but not everyone has sputum to cough up to test."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-16/coronavirus-questions-on-pregnancy-asthma-pools-and-schools/12058926

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44 minutes ago, Proboscis said:

But if you don't test, you will end up like any of the countries currently in lockdown, with hospitals over-run and not enough respiratory support to go around, with people dying in their thousands or, if things continue to go bad, into their hundreds of thousands.

 

There is a severe economic problem with not testing - it is that many key employees, including doctors and nurses, will be in quarantine when they should be deployed. A test would release this resource.

Where did I say you shouldn’t test? If I were Donny I’d call you out on fake news.

 

Trump was boasting that the US had this under control, with low numbers. The testing rollout is going to blow that lie out of the water. That was my point.

 

But the problem now is that if this is widespread in the community, testing is far too late. Think of the Human Resources you will need to trace contacts.

 

 

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5 hours ago, ThaiBunny said:

Testing: "The test itself, by the way, is not perfect. The swab may not be taken in the right way, and sometimes it turns up negative. The throat swab turns up positive quite a lot of the time. But it's a false negative some of the time. Sputum is much more accurate, but not everyone has sputum to cough up to test."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-16/coronavirus-questions-on-pregnancy-asthma-pools-and-schools/12058926

There is now at least two different strains of coronavirus: L & S. It's unknown if they cause different severity of the disease. This could complicate both testing, treatment and development of a vaccine. 

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9 hours ago, spiekerjozef said:

Why you need 2,000 labs if you only test a handful of people everyday?

What are the labs going to process when there is a shortage of test kits? Trump made the decision not to use WHO approved kits being used in S. Korea, EU, China. He wants US made test kits. 

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9 hours ago, J Town said:

Will this be like the tax break for the middle class that only really rich people got?

Someone needs to read up on the Trump tax cuts. I'll make this short as to respect the actual topic, but yes, when you pay exponentially more then you'll save more. Given the bottom 40% of earners collectively pay ZERO federal income tax, I'm not sure how much more of a tax break they are supposed to get. Do tell.

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1 minute ago, Srikcir said:

What are the labs going to process when there is a shortage of test kits? Trump made the decision not to use WHO approved kits being used in S. Korea, EU, China. He wants US made test kits. 

Who can blame Trump for that? WHO is a useless organization. I could see desperate, third world countries relying them since they have no other options, that's about it.

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1 hour ago, Crazy Alex said:

Who can blame Trump for that? WHO is a useless organization. I could see desperate, third world countries relying them since they have no other options, that's about it.

Now we know who advised Trump not to use the WHO test kits. And I'm sure your dismissal of their usefulness is based on evidence and not on mere preconceived beliefs.

Edited by bristolboy
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14 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 That's a good article and a key issue of how things have gone so wrong in the U.S.

 

But I'd counter, it's not chiefly "testing failures" that allowed the virus to sweep the U.S., but instead, failures of political will and policy-making at the highest levels of U.S. govt. (the clueless Trump Admin.) that left the U.S. adrift amidst the country's largest public health crisis in decades.

 

The failures to test effectively are just one symptom of the larger political disease that is Trump and Co.  Lying, downplaying, disregarding, delaying -- all in hopes of avoiding harm to the great one's re-election chances.  Along with an unhealthy dose of... he knows better than all the experts on every topic under the sun.

 

 

https://apnews.com/ce014d94b64e98b7203b873e56f80e9a

this

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4 hours ago, Crazy Alex said:

The 12,000 people who died from swine flu are NOT impressed with how the Obama cartel handled the swine flu. For starters, do you recall hearing about any travel restrictions from Mexico, where the virus started its journey to the US? And even if there were, they were apparently ineffective.

 

6 hours ago, Crazy Alex said:

Who can blame Trump for that? WHO is a useless organization. I could see desperate, third world countries relying them since they have no other options, that's about it.

https://apnews.com/ce014d94b64e98b7203b873e56f80e9a

 

Incompetence 

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11 hours ago, AlexRich said:

Where did I say you shouldn’t test? If I were Donny I’d call you out on fake news.

 

Trump was boasting that the US had this under control, with low numbers. The testing rollout is going to blow that lie out of the water. That was my point.

 

But the problem now is that if this is widespread in the community, testing is far too late. Think of the Human Resources you will need to trace contacts.

 

 

https://apnews.com/ce014d94b64e98b7203b873e56f80e9a

 

This would have helped big time

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15 hours ago, xylophone said:

trump lying and trying the usual deflection rhetoric on this............

 

"The USA was never set up for this, just look at the catastrophe of the H1N1 Swine Flu (Biden in charge, 17,000 people lost, very late response time)," Trump tweeted.

 

In fact, under the Obama administration, diagnostic tests for the 2009 swine flu outbreak were approved and shipped less than two weeks after the H1N1 virus was identified and a day before the first US death.

 

Why the continual lying by trump?? As the saying goes……he can't help it, it’s in his nature.

https://apnews.com/ce014d94b64e98b7203b873e56f80e9a

 

It was set up after that~then dismantled a few years ago

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To put this in  perspective Canada and the USA has the longest border in the world. Trade agreements have made their  economies intertwined. The USA has 10x the population but Canada has conducted a few thousand more virus tests. Today the USA is at >60 deaths and Canada has 1. Leadership matters.

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