McSally says frustration growing over lack of speed of coronavirus testing

PHOENIX — U.S. Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona said Friday that frustration is growing over the nation’s lack of speed in testing for coronavirus.

The United States is testing less people per day for the COVID-19 virus than most countries, even as infection numbers continue to grow.

As of Thursday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported about 1,260 U.S. illnesses — a number that trailed independent researchers, who are adding reports from individual states more quickly.

McSally said the nation’s coronavirus task force is attempting to speed up the process. President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak.

“The task force has been working around the clock to identify how we can more quickly get test kits out,” McSally told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Gaydos and Chad on Friday. “This has been a level of frustration for many of us.”

As of Friday morning in Arizona, 143 tests for coronavirus had been administered since the start of the outbreak.

There were 40 cases still pending.

The state began in-house, same-day testing on March 2.

South Korea, a country one-sixth the size of the U.S. in population, is reportedly testing 15,000 people per day.

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield noted that officials there are using automated, high-volume testing systems capable of processing thousands of samples at a time.

In contrast, the equipment used by most U.S. state and local labs requires technicians to manually process each sample in small batches, sometimes 100 or fewer per day.

“This isn’t about blame,” McSally said. “We have a system that wasn’t designed under previous administrations or this one to do massive deployment of test kits for a new virus that didn’t exist previously. It wasn’t designed that way.”

Earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton said in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence that coronavirus test kits previously sent to Arizona health officials were “defective.”

Stanton said the state’s top public health officials told him the rapid diagnostics test sent to the state lab on Feb. 11 were faulty, forcing patient samples to be sent to the CDC in Atlanta and slowing the process of confirming cases.

Chris Minnick, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Health Services, told KTAR News 92.3 FM that the defective part of the three-part test were corrected since Stanton sent his letter.

“We have been frustrated with the test kits. We’ve communicated that,” McSally said. “This isn’t an easy thing to create and get approved. We want tests that are valid.”

McSally called for unity as the country continues to come to grips with the virus, which continues to spread and cause cancellations and postponements of massive events.

“This isn’t a Republican virus or a Democrat virus,” McSally said. “It’s something that’s impacting our country.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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