'Road map' to recovery report: 20 million coronavirus tests per day needed to fully open economy https://abcnews.go.com/US/road-map-recovery-report-20-million-coronavirus-tests/story?id=70230097 With President Donald Trump saying he wants to lift stay-at-home novel coronavirus orders and open up parts of the country, more than 45 economists, social scientists, lawyers and ethicists say there's a growing consensus pointing to a major step necessary to put Americans back to work: dramatically upscaling testing. In a report titled "Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience," released on Monday morning, a blue-ribbon panel of thought leaders across the political spectrum called COVID-19 "a profound threat to our democracy, comparable to the Great Depression and World War II." "It's a moment for a 'Can Do America' to really show up and put itself to work," Danielle Allen, lead author of the report and a professor at Harvard University's Edmond J.Safra Center on Ethics, told ABC News. The report says that ending the quarantine safely will require testing, tracing, and supported isolation, a combination known by the acronym TTSI. "What people need to recognize is that a massively scaled-up testing, tracing and supported isolation system is the alternative to national quarantine," Allen said. "We all had to learn PPE [Personal Protective Equipment] and we all had to learn about flattening the curve ... now we have to learn about TTSI." 20 million tests a day Test producers will need to deliver 5 million tests per day by early June to safely open parts of the economy by late July, according to the report. To "fully re-mobilize the economy," the country will need to see testing grow to 20 million a day, the report suggests. "We acknowledge that even this number may not be high enough," according to the report. Some experts, including Nobel laureate economist Paul Romer, who did not assist in the report but has a similar approach, estimate the country may need more than 30 million tests per day. As of Sunday, the virus had infected 755,000 people in the United States and killed more than 40,000, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. More than 35,000 new cases have been confirmed since Friday, according to the data. During a coronavirus White House briefing last week, Trump said that 48 separate coronavirus tests have been authorized and that the Food and Drug Administration is working with 300 companies and laboratories to widen the nation's testing capacity. One of the largest biotech firms manufacturing the COVID-19 test, Roche Diagnostics, said it is producing about 400,000 test kits per week. Abbott Laboratories, which has created a 5-minute test, says it plans to boost its production from 50,000 tests per week to 1 million and is also working to distribute about 4 million antibody tests -- which shows if someone has recovered from the virus, even people who were never symptomatic -- by the end of April and about 20 million per month by the end of June. Other companies are also ramping up the production of tests, but making and distributing 20 million tests a day across the country is a daunting task -- one that could require vigorous use of the Defense Production Act of 1950, which authorizes the president to require private businesses to accept and prioritize contracts for materials deemed necessary for national defense. Trump has used the act sparingly during the pandemic, specifically to order some companies to produce ventilators. "You can think of it as a Marshall Plan. You can also think of it as Eisenhower's highway infrastructure, building all those great roads across the country," Allen said. "What we really need is for the federal government to set up a pandemic testing supply board that will coordinate the supply chain and achieve that massive ramp up as quickly as possible." Some politicians have expressed skepticism in the federal government's ability to muster the political willpower to accomplish the type of testing that will be required to fulfill Trump's ambition to economically reopen the country as quickly possible. (More at above url)