Apr 21, 2020 - Health

Harvard roadmap: U.S. needs to significantly ramp up coronavirus testing

Caitlin Owens

A LAFD doctor tests the homeless population in Skidrow during the coronavirus pandemic — Photo: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images

The U.S. will need to run 5 million tests a day by early June in order to safely lift social distancing measures, according to a new white paper by Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The state of play: That number will need to increase over the summer to about 20 million a day to fully reopen the economy, the authors argue.

Between the lines: We're nowhere near being able to complete this many tests a day, and yet parts of the country are already taking small steps back toward normalcy.

What they're saying: "The great value of this approach is that it will prevent cycles of opening up and shutting down," the white paper's authors write.

"If we rely on collective social distancing alone to tide us over until a vaccine is available, the economy will be shut down on and off for 12 to 18 months, costing trillions of dollars."
The widespread testing would need to be combined with contact tracing and isolation for those who have the coronavirus.

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Harvard roadmap: U.S. needs to significantly ramp up coronavirus testing

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