Vice President Mike Pence announced Sunday that about a quarter of a million people have been tested for the coronavirus so far, and many more tests will soon become available.
That total represents a massive increase in testing over the weekend.
Pence said during Sunday’s White House briefing that so far, 254,000 U.S. citizens have been tested for the coronavirus at public health labs and given their results, with about 30,000 testing positive.
“There’s a bit of an encouraging word in that,” Pence said. “It’s working out to be that one in 10 Americans who have been tested and thought they had coronavirus actually had it. Nine out of 10 did not.”
The Department of Health and Human Services will give guidance to commercial labs and hospital-based labs Monday to provide inpatient coronavirus testing in order to speed up the process of diagnosing patients who have just been admitted to the hospital with symptoms.
To speed up the diagnostic process more, medical test manufacturer Cepheid will roll out a new test for both private and public health labs to use, which the manufacturers say will produce results within 45 minutes. The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization to the company Saturday to begin making the tests immediately.
“The FDA is working with manufacturers around the company to come up with faster, more innovative tests,” Pence said.
The number of tests conducted at public health labs has ramped up significantly this month. More than 195,000 coronavirus tests had been completed as of Friday, according to coronavirus task force testing coordinator Adm. Brett Giroir. The latest tally of completed tests does not reflect the number of tests conducted at private labs and labs in hospitals.
The task force expects the backlog to decrease by the end of the week. Pence, who recently took a diagnostic test with his wife, Karen, described it as “kind of a pinch” and “kind of invasive.”
