Giroir says coronavirus testing turnaround times still too long in US
The Trump administration official overseeing critical coronavirus testing on Sunday conceded that turnaround times are still too long in the United States, as officials try to get a handle on the virus months into the pandemic.
Posted — Updated"I started out by saying that we are never going to be happy with testing until we get turnaround times within 24 hours and I would be happy with point-of-care testing everywhere. We are not there yet. We are doing everything we can to do that," Adm. Brett Giroir told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
"We need to continually improve our ecosystem," added Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The comments from Giroir come as multiple states grapple with high caseloads from the virus, and as some states, labs and public health departments are reporting that turnaround times for diagnostic testing have slowed. Health officials have cautioned that the long delays Americans are seeing across the country in getting Covid-19 test results are problematic.
The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, said last week that such delays "undercuts the value of the testing, because you do the testing to find out who's carrying the virus and then quickly get them isolated so they don't spread it around."
Lawmakers in Washington are pushing for more funding for testing and contact tracing.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are growing more confident that the Trump administration is moving to support $25 billion in additional funding for Covid-19 testing and contact tracing. The White House had initially pushed back on GOP efforts to increase federal funding for testing.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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