President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would be cutting funding to testing centers. But Doctor Mark Shrime, a physician by trade with a focus in public health from Harvard Medical School says the overwhelming consensus from experts is that testing everyone for COVID-19 is a crucial component of flattening the curve.
As of today, Michigan has tested nearly 52,000 people since testing began weeks ago. In contrast, countries like South Korea have tested as many as 15,000 people a day.
“They were able to flatten their curve because instead of taking the ‘lets isolate the entire country’ route they took the ‘lets test the entire country’ route and then they could do selective isolation.”
Selective isolation means isolating those who can spread the virus.
“But because we can’t know who those people are we can’t do that but that would allow us to reopen the economy and make things get moving a little bit faster than we can right now.”
Shrime explains that worldwide the curve is starting to flatten and cases in United States are expected to peak by next week according to models from the Institute of Health Metrics.
“So to answer your question, when will we be at a space where we are fully safe from this…honestly it’s when there’s vaccine.”
