WASHINGTON -- As the United States struggled with coronavirus testing this spring, Tennessee was the rare state that lived up to President Donald Trump's promise that "anybody that wants a test can get a test." Gov. Bill Lee announced in mid-April that any Tennessean could get tested --
WASHINGTON — As the United States struggled with coronavirus testing this spring, Tennessee was the rare state that lived up to President Donald Trump’s promise that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” Gov. Bill Lee announced in mid-April that any Tennessean could get tested — regardless of symptoms — and that the state would pay for it.
In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, expanded testing in early May and urged all residents to make appointments; in Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, did much the same thing. In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine announced June 11 that any Ohioan could get a test; he and his wife, Fran DeWine, along with the state’s lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, took tests at a news conference as a way of encouraging others to do so. Each state has since had a sharp increase in confirmed infections.
“We cannot test our way out of this,” he told reporters, adding, “Testing alone is almost never the answer.” There are some obvious explanations for Tennessee’s travails. The state was among the first to reopen its economy, and many people abandoned social distancing and masks. A country music star, Chase Rice, performed in late June in front of 1,000 people — most not wearing masks — at an outdoor venue in eastern Tennessee and was eventually shamed into delivering what critics called a nonapology.
Public health experts say they saw this coming and have been warning for months that the country was too focused on testing and not enough on other measures, like contact tracing, that must be paired with it. But the Trump administration has resisted a national testing strategy, insisting that it be left to the states. And Trump’s mixed messages about testing are only complicating matters. His claim in April that the United States had “tested more than every country combined” was rated “‘pants on fire’ wrong” by Kaiser Health News.
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