Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
US Doing 21M COVID Tests A Month But Should Be Doing 200M, Experts Say
The US should be performing as many as 200 million Covid-19 tests every month well into next year to have any chance of controlling the pandemic, experts say in a new report. That number is far beyond the country's current capacity, according to the report released Wednesday by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. (Waldrop and Fox, 9/9)
The U.S. may need up to 193 million coronavirus tests each month in order to safely reopen schools and fortify nursing homes, according to a new report published Wednesday. Current testing capacity in the U.S. is about 21 million tests per month, according to the Covid Tracking Project. (Sheridan, 9/9)
Also —
Stool tests may detect coronavirus more effectively than respiratory tests in infants and children, according to researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) who said in a report published in the journal Gut that children and infants carry a higher viral load in their stool than adults. The researchers said stool samples also can carry the coronavirus after it has been cleared from an infected patient’s respiratory tract. This could help identify asymptomatic cases, especially in infants and children who have difficulty undergoing the nasal or throat swab tests, the researchers stated in a press release. (McGorry, 9/8)
When Audrey Blute’s almost 2-year-old son, George, had a runny nose in July, she wanted to do what she felt was responsible: get him tested for coronavirus. It wasn’t easy. Ms. Blute, 34, planned to walk to one of Washington, D.C.’s free testing sites — until she learned they do not test children younger than 6. She called her pediatrician’s office, which also declined to test George. (Kliff and Sanger-Katz, 9/8)
