Former CDC Director Robert Redfield: US Needs ‘At Least a Billion Tests a Month’ to Meet Demand For Covid

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield said on Wednesday that “at least a billion tests a month” will be needed in order to meet the demand for coronavirus testing in the United States.

Long lines to get tests have popped up nationwide amid the spike in Covid cases due to the Omicron variant.

On Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, Redfield said that “it’s really important that this nation does not have the testing capability it needs.”

He continued:

I have said that, you know, my estimate, and it’s strictly an estimate is the nation needs at least a billion tests a month to meet the need. Remember, testing is not just for clinical purposes. Testing is really a fundamental tool for our public health response. Routine regular repetitive testing, for example, which I’ve advocated in schools K-12 twice a week where students can go to school, they can stay in school and twice a week they get tested.

Those students that are not infected stay in school, those students that are infected we find the silent epidemic, we pull it out of the school and we move forward with schools that do have a case with what we call test and stay, rather than sending people home. But this is going to require significant testing capability.

Unfortunately, that as we enter the third year of this pandemic our nation still hasn’t developed the private-public partnerships required to give our nation the testing that we need. And I was encouraged by the president saying and highlighting that testing’s a need now. And I hope that they address this with a high degree of urgency and get the testing not to how many tests we can give out, 500 million, but the real question is how many tests do we need? And I would argue that’s between 1 and 2 billion tests a month and we need to get to that.

Watch above, via Fox News.