US faces 'truly daunting' challenges on needed COVID tests

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite a massive effort, the nation faces “truly daunting” challenges to deploy millions of coronavirus tests to safely re-open the economy, the head of the National Institutes of Health told lawmakers Thursday.

NIH Director Francis Collins told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that government and private industry have launched a $2.5 billion effort to quickly develop, manufacture and distribute technology capable of accurately testing millions of people a week by the end of the summer or the fall, before the annual flu season.

Widespread availability of testing is seen as critical to reopening the economy because it would allow public health officials to identify and contain a rebound of the virus. But it remains a high bar to clear.

“I must tell you, senators, that this is a stretch goal that goes well beyond what most experts think will be possible,” Collins said. “I have encountered some stunned expressions when describing these goals and this timetable to knowledgeable individuals. The scientific and logistical challenges are truly daunting.”

Nonetheless, Collins said "the track record of American ingenuity” gives him optimism. Yet more than three months into the epidemic, the lack of testing is widely acknowledged as a central failing in the nation's response.

The testing issue has dogged the White House for weeks. Trump takes credit for the fact that testing has ramped up dramatically since the early days of the outbreak, when a test from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ran into numerous problems.

But sometimes he also seems uneasy about testing.

“We do, by far, the most testing,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases....