The US is not ready to reopen due to limited testing capabilities.
According to Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy partner at the Center for Global Development, on Tuesday said, the US is not ready to reopen due to its limited testing capability.
“We are not remotely prepared, not based on the epidemiology of the outbreak. Based on our preparatory abilities to start suppressing the virus in other ways than in the United States, or social distance.”
Konyndyk also warned of future COVID-19 waves. “Even in the best of circumstances, we will face the second wave and the third wave. But if we reopen soon, we are going to get worse because the virus is now so widespread across the country that there are plenty of people who can spread it.”
Jeremy Konyndyk warned that the rush to reopen would be simultaneously damaging to health and the economy. He stressed that America is far behind where it should be in terms of the number of people it can test daily.
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Some experts believe that 20 to 30 million people a day must be tested before they can safely reopen.
Why should the US have test capability?
As a completely new disease, COVID-19 required the development of a new trial. The timeline is as follows.
In January, the US ignored the World Health Organization (WHO) inspections offered to the world, as it usually does, in favour of domestic growth.
At the time, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) struggled with the development of the tests, and then in February, they discovered manufacturing problems with the tools they developed.
By then, the kits were distributed to state and local public health laboratories, and it took the CDC two more weeks to fix them.
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On February 29, the FDA decided to allow commercial labs to create their tests to speed up delivery.
All of these choices and mistakes halted the development of the US with insufficient test skills, and they have kept the country as described by Jeremy Konyndyk.
