Testing is a key pillar of the nation's coronavirus response, but throughout the pandemic, states have reported testing shortages and weekslong delays for results. This week, President Trump announced a new phase in the nation's testing strategy - the widespread rollout of rapid antigen tests, which can give results in as little as 15 minutes. The president said 150 million of those tests will be distributed in the coming months.
GIROIR: So it works by - unlike some of the traditional tests that amplify the genetic material, this actually looks for the proteins that are actually on the virus. So what it does is you just take a simple sample from the outer part of your nose - not the real deep one. You put it inside this card that you have just added a little bit of fluid - and what it is, it's an antibody that detects the antigen.
GIROIR: So every test has false negatives and false positives. When you look at this specific test, its authorization is for those in the first seven days of symptoms, and its agreement with the best laboratory PCR test is 97% for sensitivity, 98% for specificity. So it really is quite good and a cheap, highly produced card.
GIROIR: So of the 150 million, 50 million will be going to those vulnerable communities prioritized by the community outbreak. So if you're a nursing home in a green county where you only have to test your workers once a month, you're not getting any of these Binaxes. We've already provided a lot of other things. So 50 million are really going to go by that kind of community-spread priority.
GIROIR: It didn't mean we're going to do all of that because there's lots of reasons why people choose to get tested, they don't get tested. And it turns out, this month, without pooling, we have about 90 million available. Now, we're probably only going to use about 30 million of those. And I do want to emphasize to people that we do need more testing, particularly where there's community outbreak.
As the head of the nation's testing strategy, with the minute I have with you, why has guidance to the public been so muddled?