Trump administration to offer 'surge' coronavirus testing in Florida, Louisiana and Texas

Trump administration officials announced Tuesday that they had begun high-volume coronavirus testing in three communities temporarily in an experiment to try to tamp down rising numbers of cases and hospitalizations.

In what Health and Human Services officials are calling surge testing, the government is sending in contractors and arranging laboratory services to provide 5,000 diagnostic tests per day each in Baton Rouge, La.; Edinburg, Tex.; and Jacksonville, Fla. The sites will last five to 12 days unless state officials want to keep them going, and people getting tested will not be charged.

The project, coming as testing capacity is being strained by an upswing of covid-19 cases in parts of the South and the West, is focused in particular on ferreting out cases among relatively young adults who may not have symptoms and may be unaware they are spreading the potentially deadly virus.

“We can’t test our way out of this,” Brett P. Giroir, an HHS assistant secretary who is the administration’s coronavirus testing coordinator, said of the nation’s recent run of record new cases. But identifying unwitting spreaders, he said, can prompt those people to isolate themselvesand increase awareness of the important of wearing masks, keeping safe distances, washing hands and protecting the elderly or those who have other vulnerabilities.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-to-offer-surge-coronavirus-testing-in-florida-louisiana-and-texas/ar-BB16s5mH?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=DELLDHP

More than likely this is because those are three states Trump needs this November.