EDITORIAL: Coronavirus Testing --US needs a national plan--NY Times

Six months into the global coronavirus pandemic, Americans trying to navigate daily life remain trapped between a clear ideal — the country needs to test as many people as possible for the virus, as regularly as possible, for as long as possible — and the reality that there are nowhere near enough tests in the United States to do that.

Widespread testing is the key to opening schools and businesses safely. It’s the only way to get a handle on where the coronavirus is spreading, whether efforts to control it are working and what precautions are needed in any given community at any given moment. But funding shortfalls and bottlenecks mean that nearly every entity in the country is falling far short of that goal.

By most estimates, the United States is conducting fewer than five million tests per week on average, a far cry from the 30 million per week that experts were hoping to achieve by this fall. In some communities it remains difficult to find a test at all. In others, results take a week or longer to come back, making them all but useless.

These shortcomings have left institutions and individuals with a string of intractable questions: When should people without symptoms get tested? Who should be granted priority when supplies are limited? Which kinds of coronavirus tests should be used under which circumstances?

There does not seem to be any consensus on these questions. Some schools are requiring entry testing for returning faculty and students, even in places where tests are difficult to come by. Others are not, even where transmission rates are high. The N.B.A. is testing everyone; the meatpacking industry is not. And while the Trump administration is reportedly working to supply the nation’s nursing homes with rapid point-of-care tests — as is urgently needed — it has neglected to do the same for other congregant living facilities, like prisons, where outbreaks have devastated populations.

Much of this discord could have been prevented if America had developed a national testing strategy early in the pandemic — with local, state and federal officials coordinating to clear supply chain bottlenecks and public and private entities working together to develop rapid point-of-care tests.

There is no shortage of road maps for correcting course. The administration could dust off the national testing plan its own advisers created. Or it could look to the roster of organizations — including the Rockefeller Foundation — that have developed similar proposals. But even at this stage in the pandemic, with many thousands of lives and livelihoods lost, federal leaders are acting too slowly.

Amid this void in leadership — and the abundant confusion over testing across America at the moment — here’s what state and local leaders, parents, business owners and individuals should keep in mind. ....