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After initially lagging behind South Korea, whose population is less than a fifth of the U.S.’s, the U.S. has indeed surpassed the country in per capita testing. But experts say the reason South Korea has been hailed for its testing model isn’t just for its implementation of widespread testing—but for how quickly it got such a system into place. “The timing is very different” between the two countries, said Xi Chen, an assistant professor of health policy and economics at the Yale School of Public Health. “In South Korea, they did [widespread testing] much earlier after they had the first patient. The U.S. was delayed for more than a month.” (Ballhaus, 5/12)

Sen. Mitt Romney on Tuesday admonished the Trump administration for touting its coronavirus testing operation in recent days after weeks of missteps, accusing the White House’s testing czar of playing politics. “I understand that politicians are going to frame data in a way that is most positive politically,” the Utah Republican told Adm. Brett Giroir, a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, during a Senate hearing on the pandemic. “Of course, I don’t expect that from admirals.” (Oprysko, 5/12)

As governors across the U.S. loosen restrictions and look to reopen their economies, a majority of Americans think it’s mainly the federal government’s responsibility to ensure there’s adequate coronavirus testing, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Tuesday. The majority, 61 percent of U.S. adults, say it’s primarily the federal government’s responsibility, compared with 37 percent who say the responsibility mainly falls on state governments to make sure there are enough tests to safely lift restrictions. (Ward, 5/12)

HHS testing czar Brett Giroir predicted Tuesday that the U.S. will be able to test up to 50 million people per month for the coronavirus by September. That would be roughly four times the 12.9-million test goal the administration set for May and announced Monday at a Rose Garden briefing. "We project that our nation will be capable of performing at least 40 to 50 million tests per month if needed at that time," Giroir said Tuesday during a hearing of the Senate HELP Committee. (Lim, 5/12)

The Trump administration says it will now spend billions of dollars to help states make COVID-19 testing more widely available, a move meant to address months-long complaints about test shortages. But here's the puzzle: Many labs say they have plenty of tests. So what's the disconnect? Turns out a "test" is not a single device. COVID-19 testing involves several steps, each one requiring different supplies, and there are shortages of different supplies at different times in different places. (Pfeiffer, Anderson and Van Woerkom, 5/12)

Akhilesh Ramachandran emailed Oklahoma’s public health laboratory just days after the novel coronavirus hit the state in March. As a manager of a veterinary school diagnostic lab, he knew lots about rapid, high-volume testing for viruses — in animals. He offered his facility as a “backup” for human testing, he said, figuring officials “might say, ‘You guys do 100 samples, and we’ll do the rest.’” But within weeks, the Oklahoma State University lab — which typically tests for diseases such as rabies in dogs and respiratory ailments in Oklahoma’s large cattle industry — was running more human coronavirus tests than any other lab in the state. (Brulliard, 5/12)

At a flotation therapy studio in Marina Del Rey, the sensory deprivation tank is empty, but antibody tests for the coronavirus are selling at $149. Customers of a botox clinic in Venice don’t even have to get out of their cars to get tested; a worker collects blood samples with the prick of a finger. A banner for a clinic in Las Vegas advertises antibody tests and throws in a doctor visit for $169. And $125 antibody tests have recently been added to the menu at a chiropractic clinic in Florida that also offers libido-boosting vitamins and nonsurgical face-lifts. (Lau, 5/12)

A handful of U.S. health care companies are banking on massive demand for coronavirus tests and an easing of federal rules as they prepare for a major production blitz that could bring at-home saliva test kits to millions of Americans in the coming months. “The plan is to keep scaling,” said Jason Feldman, the CEO at Vault Health, one of the companies that recently started selling at-home saliva test kits, which rely on a sample of spit in a test tube, which is mailed into a New Jersey lab to screen for COVID-19. (Mosk and Bruggeman, 5/13)

Stanford researchers are developing a test that can diagnose the coronavirus by analyzing saliva collected in a small cup, which — if proven reliable and accurate — could make testing more accessible, cheaper and less invasive. The work comes as the Food and Drug Administration recently authorized the use of the first at-home coronavirus saliva test, made by a lab at Rutgers University in New Jersey, which is working with companies to manufacture and distribute thousands of the tests to health care providers, nursing facilities and homes across the United States. (Ho, 5/12)