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OPINON: Covid Vaccines Aren’t Enough. We Still Need More Tests.--NY Times Op-ED IME

There’s reason for optimism on the coronavirus pandemic: The number of new Covid-19 cases is dropping, and 98.2 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered in the United States. But a decline in the number of coronavirus tests being conducted threatens this progress, because those tests are vital to tracing the path and velocity of Covid-19.

The average number of tests being conducted daily to detect the coronavirus in the United States has dropped 20 percent since Feb. 1. At the same time, the nation does not have enough rapid tests to conduct routine testing outside of sites run by local health departments and medical clinics. America needs to expand the nation’s testing capacity and accelerate the proliferation of rapid coronavirus tests in order to overcome Covid-19.

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Seattle’s virus success is an example of what could have been

SEATTLE — Facing the nation’s first widespread coronavirus outbreak, some of Washington State’s top leaders quietly gathered on a Sunday morning last March for an urgent strategy session.

The virus had been rampaging through a nursing home in the Seattle suburbs. By the time the meeting began, the region had recorded most of the nation’s first 19 deaths. New cases were surfacing by the hour.

As the meeting’s presentation got to the fifth slide, the room grew somber. The numbers showed a variety of potential outcomes, but almost every scenario was a blue line pointing exponentially upward. ...

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