Still, there were doubts from public health experts that the White House’s new testing targets were sufficient.

Monday’s developments were meant to fill critical gaps in White House plans to begin easing restrictions, ramping up testing for the virus while shifting the president’s focus toward recovery from the economic collapse caused by the outbreak. The administration unveiled a “blueprint” for states to scale up their testing in the coming week — a tacit admission, despite public statements to the contrary, that testing capacity and availability over the past two months have been lacking.

The new testing targets would ensure states had enough COVID-19 tests available to sample at least 2.6 percent of their populations each month — a figure already met by a majority of states. Areas that have been harder hit by the virus would be able to test at double that rate, or higher, the White House said.

The testing issue has bedeviled the administration for months. Trump told reporters on March 6 during a visit to the CDC in Atlanta that “anybody that wants a test can get a test,” but the reality has proved to be vastly different.

The initial COVID-19 test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was contaminated, and early kits operated only on platforms able to perform a small number of tests per day. While the rate of testing increased as tests developed for higher-capacity platforms, they were still limited by shortages of supplies, from nasal swabs to the reagents used to process the samples.

Administration officials maintained Monday that the limiting factor now is actually the availability of samples from people who have been tested — either because guidelines on who could be tested are too stringent or because there are not enough health workers able to take nasal swab samples from them.

The CDC moved to address one of those concerns Monday, expanding the list of people to be prioritized for virus testing to include those who show no symptoms but are in high-risk settings like nursing homes. And Trump met with leaders of businesses including CVS, Walmart, and Kroger, who said they were working to expand access to tests across the country.

“Testing is not going to be a problem at all,” Trump said later in the Rose Garden, AP reported.

However, many of the administration’s past pledges and goals on testing have not been met.

Jeremy Konyndyk, a disaster preparedness expert who helped lead the Obama administration response to Ebola, said the administration’s testing plans are well short of what is needed.

Researchers at Harvard have estimated the country needs to be testing a minimum of 500,000 people per day, and possibly many more. Konyndyk said the aim should be 2 million to 3 million per day. Trump said the current total, up sharply in recent days, is over 200,000 per day.

Konyndyk said: “Over the past month, we’ve doubled or if you want to be really generous tripled the testing capacity in this country. We need to take where we are now and expand it tenfold.”

The testing blueprint for states provides details missing from the administration’s guidelines for them to return to normal operations, which were released more than a week ago. It includes a focus on surveillance testing as well as “rapid response” programs to isolate those who test positive and identify those with whom they had come in contact. The administration aims to have the market “flooded” with tests for the fall when COVID-19 is expected to recur alongside the seasonal flu.

Trump and administration medical experts outlined the plan on a call with governors Monday afternoon, before unveiling them publicly in a Rose Garden press conference.

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“That’s just delusional to be making statements like that,” Northam told CNN when asked about Trump’s comments that there is enough testing across the country.

Northam said his state has been fighting “every day” for personal protective equipment and for testing.

“It’s not a straightforward test. We don’t even have enough swabs, believe it or not,” Northam added.

During a briefing Saturday, Trump said, “We have tremendous testing capacity.” He claimed that “some partisan voices are trying to politicize the issue of testing.”

Trump also directly attacked Northam, who has signed a series of gun reform bills recently.

“I would say liberate Virginia when that kind of thing happens,” Trump said at the briefing, referring to recent gun control measures signed into law by Northam. “I think it’s a very good analogy.”

In response to Trump’s criticism, Northam said on Sunday that it is not a time for “divisiveness.”

“Trump has been unable to deliver on tests. Now he has chosen to focus on protests, and this is not the time for protests,” Northam said. “This is not the time for divisiveness. This is time for leadership that will stand up and provide empathy, that will understand what’s going on in this country of ours with this pandemic. It’s the time of truth, and it’s time to bring people together.”

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