Scaling back federal support for COVID-19 testing ...
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Maybe this is the follow-through from Trump telling his people to slow down testing.
'The federal government is ending its support for 13 drive-thru coronavirus testing sites on June 30, urging states to take over their operations — even as cases spike in several parts of the country.
The sites, which HHS says are spread across five states, are the remnants of a larger federal testing program established early in the pandemic. Seven sites are in Texas, which is experiencing record numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
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Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) was also critical of the plan. "It's pretty clear to me, and I think it's clear to all of us, that with the uptick of cases, now is not the time to retreat from our vigilance in testing," he said. "I believe that they need to extend that federal support in Texas, at least until we get this most recent uptick in cases addressed."
...'Of all the things the federal government can be doing or deliberately choose to stop doing at this time, this is the thing they choose to stop doing.
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That's because there are many, many more venues to obtain a test and most of these drive-through testing sites are kicking specimens to the respective state's public health department.
We've cut way back already.
Local protocol for small hospital testing is to refer outpatients specimens to reference labs and admits to the state public health lab. That has markedly improved TAT on patients being admitted to hospital.
As for antibody tests, I just helped finish an install for this test:
In our case, the test platform is a Dimension analyzer, which is a ubiquitous small hospital analyzer.
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Somebody in the system said the 13 sites were not following grant guidelines. That's why the feds are ending the support. There is more explanation further down in Ax's story.
MSM is implying that the fedgov is cutting back on account of the big bad Trump Administration (see the headline). Maybe the feds aren't handling the guidelines violations very well, who knows, but there's more to the story.
Maybe it's the case that if the feds did nothing, somebody would be bellyaching that the feds are running a sloppy program.
MSM needs to freaking stop inserting itself into news stories. Things are bad enough already.
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Why should the feds give out free healthcare to people who are capable of getting it on their own?
Stop spending.
@Copper said in Scaling back federal support for COVID-19 testing ...:
Why should the feds give out free healthcare to people who are capable of getting it on their own?
Stop spending.
Trump administration restores federal funding for Texas testing sites
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/26/trump-texas-coronavirus-testing-sites-341795@Copper must be so disappointed.
