Rob Horowitz: Trump Administration Must Step Up on Testing

Rob Horowitz: Trump Administration Must Step Up on Testing

Dramatically expanding testing is an essential pillar of our ability to limit the spread of coronavirus and safely open the nation back up for business.

Dr, Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force, said over the weekend we need to double the number of diagnostic tests we are conducting over the next several weeks. And Fauci’s estimate is on the low end of what most public health experts think we need.  Dr. Ashish Jha, Faculty Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and his colleagues, for example, wrote in a recent article that we needed to perform 3 times to 5 times as many tests as we are currently.

On a per-capita basis, nations that have done a much better job of limiting Covid-19, such as Germany and South Korea, are conducting far more tests than we are.

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The well-documented initial testing failures by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been well-documented. “The testing failure is putting additional strain on our already challenged health system,” Cynthia Cox, director of the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, told Vox in March “The combination of all of these factors will make the US worse off than similar countries."

Cox’s prediction, unfortunately, has come true and our ability to catch up on our initial disastrous start continues to be hampered by shortages in testing supplies, such as reagents and swabs. These are shortages that are best solved by the Trump Administration’s exercise of the Defense Production Act to order our nation’s businesses to manufacture these supplies.  Additionally, the administration is best positioned to use its leverage to procure these supplies from the nations that now manufacture them and distribute them across the country in an orderly fashion.  

Yet, President Trump still refuses to take responsibility for solving the testing problem, preferring to continually talk about "what a great job we are doing on testing’ and either deliberately or ignorantly confusing testing capacity with having all the necessary supplies to perform the test. He continues to blame any testing problems on the states.

But even worse than his false statements and blame-shifting is the absence of needed federal action.  The power of the Defense Production Act is in his hands alone; no governor can exercise it. Similarly, the federal government is the only entity that can negotiate and leverage production abroad effectively.

 Without this federal coordination, there is a wild west of supply procurement where governors compete against each other, bidding up the prices and still falling short of getting all the supplies they need.  As the Washington Post reported, “the effort is highly disorganized as governors scramble for supplies, even buying them directly from other countries, as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) did this week with help from his South Korean wife.”

The road ahead to safeguarding our health, while re-opening our nation for business, is well-marked. It is robust testing, combined with contact tracing and isolation for those who test positive or are exposed.  It is long-past time for President Trump to take responsibility for procuring the supplies needed to ramp up to the about  5 million tests a week, experts tell us are required.  Only he can exercise the Defense Production Act. In words that may resonate better with him, “Only he can fix it.”

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.