Covid-19 testing is key, but a testing-only strategy is a ‘complete failure’

CNN — Until President Trump’s coronavirus infection, the White House strategy for keeping him and others in the administration safe was one of testing only. Testing-only strategy a ‘complete failure’ Unlike mask-wearing, testing would not “send the wrong message” as Trump has said in the past, and one he reinforced when he pointedly took off his mask on the White House balcony after leaving Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Monday night. These tests were given EUA for use in people “within the first seven days of the onset of symptoms.” Said Murphy, “So, the test is not perfect; you can have false negatives, especially in the asymptomatics.” The second reason a test-only strategy can fail is that people don’t test positive immediately after getting infected – not even with the gold standard PCR test – because it takes a while for the virus to replicate in a person’s body to levels high enough to be picked up by a test. “You can be negative now and, at some particular point, you turn positive.” So there can be a lag time between getting infected and then testing positive, where even someone who gets tested every day, like the President and his staff, can be infectious, said Murphy, “because the person could be in the process of converting.” A third way a testing-only strategy can fail is what Murphy calls “system failure.” “They have the plan, but is everybody really getting every day?” Murphy wondered. “That’s what breaks down and that’s what broke down in the White House strategy: the virus gets ahead of the tests, and if you’re not having prevention strategies in place to keep people who aren’t infected, you can’t get completely ahead of that with testing alone,” Baeten said.