Senators Admit US Virus Test Rollout Goals Won’t Be Met: “It’s Way Smaller Than A Million”

Just as we warned two days ago, the Trump administration won’t be able to meet its promised timeline of having a million coronavirus tests available by the end of the week, according to senators speaking after a briefing Thursday from health officials.

“There won’t be a million people to get a test by the end of the week,” Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida said.

“It’s way smaller than that. And still, at this point, it’s still through public health departments.”

Bloomberg reports that Scott and other lawmakers said the government is “in the process” of sending test kits out and people still need to be trained on how to use them.

“By the end of the week they’re getting them out to the mail,” Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said.

“It’s going to take time to be able to get them, receive them, re-verify them and then be able to put them into use.”

As we noted previously, without the tests, it will take longer for public health officials to figure out how widespread the virus truly is, giving the market a false impression that containment efforts have been a success. The only problem is that containing a virus isn’t like negotiating a trade deal. While a certain amount of bluster is acceptable, at a certain point, you actually need to fix the problem.

And just yesterday, we reported, Dr. Fauci appeared on cable news and warned that the outbreak has likely reached “pandemic proportions” regardless of the WHO’s reluctance to label it accordingly.