The head of the Trump Administration’s testing effort, Brett Giroir, told House select committee on the coronavirus that having tests results returned within two to three days “s not a possible benchmark we can achieve today,” reports the Washington Post.
Despite Trump touting increased testing capacity and the number of tests in afternoon briefings, Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the capacity in the nation to process the current volume of tests.
Giroir noted that 75% of tests are returned within five days. However, public health experts say long turnaround on test results inhibits the ability of contact tracers to effectively stem the spread of the infection.
Various academic and private sector organizations are working on methods to speed testing of samples, including group (or pool) testing, where multiple samples are tested at once, a process that is effective when infections are minimal.