Cuomo to talk coronavirus testing with Trump at White House meeting

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) will tell President Trump at a White House meeting that the federal government should take on a larger role in resolving the supply chain issues that are a barrier to achieving widespread coronavirus testing in the U.S., he said Tuesday.

President Trump announced Monday he would meet with Cuomo to discuss New York’s coronavirus response.

The ability to test large portions of the population for COVID-19 is considered a key component to reopening the U.S. economy, but Trump has repeatedly put the onus on states to find their own testing supplies even as the pandemic strains the global supply chains for swabs, personal protective equipment, vials and chemicals called reagents needed to perform COVID-19 tests. 

“I get the instinct to distance yourself from it, but it’s a situation where you need everybody to work together, and you need to understand quickly who is in a better situation to do what,” Cuomo said during his daily press conference Tuesday. 

Cuomo said he agrees testing is the responsibility of states. But he stressed individual states don’t have the same power the federal government does to force companies to ramp up the manufacturing of testing supplies that are becoming harder, if not impossible, to find in the commercial market.  

“There’s been a lot of discussion about testing but I think in a lot of ways we’re talking past each other. Let’s just coordinate who does what — what do the states do and what does the federal government do,” Cuomo said.

“And I’m going to ask them to take this piece of the national manufacturer [issue],  getting the test kits and the vials and the cotton swabs and the chemicals,” he added.

As Trump pushes for some states to reopen their economies, health experts caution there is still not enough testing to do so.

Harvard researchers said Friday that the country needs between 500,000 and 700,000 tests per day. Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s former Food and Drug Administration chief, said Monday that the country needs a similar figure, or about 3 million tests per week. The U.S. currently runs about 150,000 tests a day. 

However, Trump has argued states aren’t doing enough to shore up testing on their own.

“Now they scream ‘Testing, Testing, Testing,’ again playing a very dangerous political game,” he tweeted Monday. “States, not the Federal Government, should be doing the Testing – But we will work with the Governors and get it done. This is easy compared to the fast production of thousands of complex Ventilators!”

Trump said Sunday he would use the Defense Production Act to increase production of swabs by 20 million a month after governors called for him to do so for weeks.