🧪3 months later: same damn problems. People seeking drive-up coronavirus tests in Phoenix faced a 3-mile-long car line. The phone line for testing at a large site now opens at 7 a.m. By 7:07 a.m., all 1,000 appointments for the day are taken. #COVID19 nytimes.com/2020/06/25/ups…
2) “Inadequate testing capacity has hampered the American coronavirus response since the start of the pandemic. When the federal government distributed faulty test kits in February, states were unable to monitor the disease’s early spread.”
3) “Since then, no national testing strategy has emerged. Local govt and health providers largely decide where to offer testing. And bottlenecks today are strikingly similar to those in the pandemic’s early weeks: labs unable to obtain the machines they need to run more tests”
4) “...scrambling to hire enough workers to staff them, and a fragmented laboratory system that makes it hard for hospitals and doctor’s offices to coordinate with facilities that could handle excess volume.”
5) “American labs continue to compete w/ one another as well as those abroad for testing supplies like swabs used to collect samples and the machines that process the material.”
