The White House's new COVID-19 testing plan would take 4 years to test every American

• The Trump administration says it is prepared to send states enough COVID-19 diagnostic tests to screen 2% of their populations each month, CBS reported.
• That plan is "inadequate" for reopening the economy, according to public-health expert Dr. Ashish Jha.
• If states begin to lift lockdowns without doing enough testing and contact tracing, the country could be forced to shut down again within months.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After the White House released a blueprint for state-level coronavirus testing programs on Monday, CBS News reported that the administration is prepared to send states enough diagnostic tests to screen 2% of their populations each month.

At that pace, it would take more than four years to test every American.

"This is a start but [the White House is] not yet serious about keeping [the] economy open," Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said on Twitter. "I don't get it."

Experts agree that widespread testing is crucial in order to safely lift lockdowns across the US. Local health authorities must be able to test widely for COVID-19 in order to track the pathogen's spread through the population as people mingle and go back to work. That way, states, counties, and cities can isolate infected people and impose new restrictions if necessary to slow the virus's spread before cases overwhelm local hospitals.

But to hit that goal, the White House's new plan is "inadequate," Jha said, noting that it could result in a disastrous surge in cases that would force another lockdown.

"If you're not testing and people are getting sick out there, then by the time they show up to your hospital, you have a huge wave coming and it's too late," he told Business Insider. "That's what happened to us the first time."

The White House plan could force another lockdown in 2 months

To open the country quickly and safely (given current testing capacities) Jha has recommended a "bare minimum" of roughly half a million tests per day — enough for 4% of the US population each month.

"I don't know, right now, how to get up to 10 to 20 million times a day," Jha said. "With 500,000 to 700,000 a day, we have a shot of opening the economy and keeping it going for more than six weeks or two months. If we don't do this, we're going to basically find ourselves with large numbers of cases and having to shut down again in two to two-and-a-half months."

The White House plan falls far short of that, providing only enough tests for roughly 200,000 Americans each day, and also does not provide a clear timeline or roadmap for exactly when testing would ramp up or how tests would get distributed to states.

Many states have their own testing infrastructure, but even assuming the White House tests were added to that existing capacity, it still wouldn't meet Jha's goal. The COVID Tracking Project reported that 1.5 million tests conducted nationwide last week — roughly 200,000 each day.

Plus, Jha said, even more testing will be needed in the early fall, when the virus could make a resurgence as flu season begins.

"If we go into the fall with 500,000 [daily tests], we're going to get crushed," he said.

Still, he added, "I am more optimistic we'll have 10 million tests a day in September than I am we'll have 500,000 tests a day in May."

It will take more than testing to avoid a 'super costly' shutdown

Testing alone is not enough to protect the US from another disastrous surge in coronavirus cases. To contain new outbreaks, experts say, the country also needs an army of contact tracers to track down anyone who came into contact with an infected person. Those contacts must be informed of their exposure and self-isolate for 14 days.

"If all you're doing is testing, then you're just going to spot it getting worse and there's nothing you can do to stop it and cut off transmission," Jha said. "So there it's not just how many tests you have, but what services you have to back up those tests."

On Monday, a bipartisan group of public health experts wrote a letter to Congress proposing a $46.5 billion plan to safely reopen the economy. The plan emphasized three major spending areas: expanding the contract-tracing workforce, transforming vacant hotels into self-isolation facilities, and offering $50 a day to people who voluntarily self-isolate after coming into contact with an infected person.

Such measures could help prevent a future lockdown once the virus starts spreading again.

"It's going to be super costly over the long run to have to shut down again," Jha said. "Don't shut down again. Don't find yourself in the same place that we found ourselves in a-month-and-a-half ago."

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