WASHINGTON • The United States is planning a major expansion of coronavirus testing at retail health locations around the country, part of a plan to vastly expand checks for the virus and begin getting people back to work.
A White House official said the administration plans to provide enough tests to all 50 states to screen at least 2 per cent of their residents. The intention is to target the most vulnerable communities, including the elderly and minority populations that have seen higher mortality rates from the virus.
CVS Health, the drugstore chain, said on Monday it will open testing sites at 1,000 of its stores.
The announcement coincides with a planned meeting between President Donald Trump and some of the nation's largest retailers and lab testing companies. Other retailers are expected to make similar announcements at the meeting.
CVS will offer self-swab tests to people who meet Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) criteria. People will be required to register online and will then be tested at a drive-through window or in a store car park.
The company hopes to be able to conduct 1.5 million tests a month, pending availability of supplies and lab capacity. If successful, the effort would represent a substantial expansion of testing capacity.
Experts estimate that the US will have to run at least 500,000 tests daily to start to get people back to work. That is about 200,000 a day more than the peak number of daily tests done within the past week, said the Covid Tracking Project, a data group following test counts.
Testing is a key part of the strategy to reopen the country and loosen social distancing rules. Widespread testing would allow states to conduct programmes to better track infections and isolate sick people, shifting from programmes of broad, blunt restrictions to more precise ones.
The testing announcement coincides with a new White House testing strategy released on Monday aimed at monitoring the spread of the virus and reopening the country's economy.
Last month, Mr Trump said at a news conference that the federal government would partner with CVS, Walmart, Target and Walgreens Boots Alliance to test people for the coronavirus in the retailers' car parks. Rite Aid later joined the effort. About 70 testing sites have already opened at drugstores including Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens, as well as Walmart.
Most diagnostic testing is still done at hospitals or by other healthcare providers. The result is that testing has been focused mostly on very sick people, resulting in what experts believe is a serious undercount of cases.
Health experts agree that widespread testing is necessary to reopening of the economy.
The federal government has been widely criticised for failing to quickly implement a national testing strategy.
The CDC is also expected to release new guidelines widening testing criteria to people without symptoms, but who work in high-risk settings, the Associated Press reported. Research shows that people without symptoms or who have yet to develop them may be able to spread the disease.
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