Jeff Schlegelmilch, Deputy Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told Newsmax TV on Thursday that the country needs to vastly expand its testing for the coronavirus to keep it from spreading.
“We absolutely need to see many, many more tests, not just more tests in terms of the raw numbers, but more tests per capita. If we look at countries like [South] Korea, in parts of Asia where they’ve been able to really balance this social distancing to keeping the economy open. The key difference has been in the level of testing and the per capita level of testing to be able to identify contact, help keep people out of these physical social situations so you could start to ramp up and reopen some businesses, which is ultimately where we want to get to.”
He added that “anything we can do to better innovate… opens up more possibilities for rapid testing, more possibilities for more widespread diagnosis,” noting that “approving” and “improving” a test is “very different than actually getting it out there” to people “who need it.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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