By Alexander Nazaryan
March 10, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
Despite vows to drastically
expand the coronavirus testing regime, federal and
state public health authorities have tested only
6,563 people for the coronavirus as of Tuesday
morning, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention and numbers provided by all
50 states.
That count includes people tested by the federal
government and by state laboratories. Because those
laboratories may not always report people who tested
negative for the coronavirus, the true number of
people tested is probably somewhat higher.
Confusion about that exact number persists even
at the highest reaches government. Earlier on
Tuesday, Department of Health and Human Services
Secretary Alex Azar said he couldn’t provide the
figure. “We don’t know exactly how many because
hundreds of thousands of our tests have gone out to
private labs and hospitals that currently do not
report in to CDC,” he said in a CNN appearance.
That number stands in stark contrast to
the promises made by leading members of the Trump
administration’s coronavirus task force, who
have variously asserted that 75,000 people would be
tested by last week’s end and that laboratories
across the United States would have the capacity to
conduct 1.5 million tests by the beginning of this
week.