States Sidestep Trump to Buy Millions of Virus Tests

[left-of-center2012]

Source: Bloomberg

A bipartisan group of governors led by Maryland’s Larry Hogan has formed a pact with the Rockefeller Foundation to buy millions of coronavirus antigen tests, the most significant example so far of states teaming to fight the pandemic rather than working through the federal government.

The agreement currently includes six states, which together plan to buy 3 million tests, with the foundation helping to marshal funds. But the governors aim to recruit more states, assuring test-makers of the biggest possible market. The group includes Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia, and the states are already in discussions with test manufacturers Becton, Dickinson & Co., and Quidel Corp. The tests, which search for proteins on the surface of the virus, can deliver results in 15 to 20 minutes.

The agreement is a significant rebuke to the administration of President Donald Trump, which has failed to formulate a coherent national plan to fight a disease that so far has killed more than 156,000 Americans.

“With severe shortages and delays in testing and the federal administration attempting to cut funding for testing, the states are banding together to acquire millions of faster tests to help save lives and slow the spread of Covid-19,” said Hogan, the Republican governor of a blue state who is the outgoing chairman of the National Governors Association.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-04/governors-form-bipartisan-pact-to-buy-millions-of-virus-tests?srnd=premium

[unc70]

1. NC has now joined this group

[dweller]

2. good

i was reading this and wondering how we could join in

✌🏼

[unc70]

4. Cooper announced it during a CNN interview

[Warpy]

3. If only they had done this five months ago!

Germany had adequate test kits and had offered them, old 'Murka First Dumdum refused them. Had governors on the west coast and in the northeast accepted them in defiance of Dumdum's dogma, perhaps the outbreak could have been contained in the beginning. Instead we got kits rushed out by the CDC that didn't work.

We need to recognize that we have no working central government and won't have unless we throw this trash out in November.

[murielm99]

5. In April, the governor of Illinois

had to make secret plans to buy PPE from China. He had to bypass the feds to get what our state needed.