Quote:
Originally Posted by Got Stripers
Well the US is back to the peak April levels, but hey let’s stop funding for pop up testing, let’s suggest if we didn’t test these numbers wouldn’t look that bad. Get the rally’s going sans masks, let evolution take its natural course, get those states open we need to crank up the economy. Those that we sacrifice due to our collective stupidity will have died for a good cause.
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From The Hill:
The Trump administration is not abandoning federally funded coronavirus testing sites, the administration's COVID-19 testing "czar" said Wednesday.
Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that even though the government will stop directly funding 13 community-based coronavirus testing sites, the amount of testing will not decrease, and the sites should not lose resources.
"We are not withdrawing support," Giroir said. "We are providing federal support in a different way."
Giroir said the sites, which are located in Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado and Pennsylvania, will be supported by the $11 billion Congress allocated for testing and contact tracing, just like hundreds of other sites across the country.
"We have worked carefully to make sure that [the 13 sites] could sunset without losing any services to any people," Giroir said.
Giroir said those 13 sites will remain open and will be operated by the states. He said governors were aware of the plan to transition to state control, which had been in place since April . . .
Giroir said there has never been an intention to decrease testing, and governors know that.
"Let me say definitively that we are moving to increase testing. Both the number, the quantity and the targeting on social vulnerability, and we will continue to do that" Giroir said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established 41 community-based testing sites in coronavirus hot spots across the country in March, but the program has evolved since those initial sites opened, and now only 13 are remaining.
Those sites are now outdated, Giroir said. They were narrowly focused and operated when supplies were much more limited.
Giroir said there are now more than 600 testing sites in 48 states, operating under a federal program that will reimburse retail pharmacies for providing tests.