OPINON: Covid Vaccines Aren’t Enough. We Still Need More Tests.--NY Times Op-ED IME

There’s reason for optimism on the coronavirus pandemic: The number of new Covid-19 cases is dropping, and 98.2 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered in the United States. But a decline in the number of coronavirus tests being conducted threatens this progress, because those tests are vital to tracing the path and velocity of Covid-19.

The average number of tests being conducted daily to detect the coronavirus in the United States has dropped 20 percent since Feb. 1. At the same time, the nation does not have enough rapid tests to conduct routine testing outside of sites run by local health departments and medical clinics. America needs to expand the nation’s testing capacity and accelerate the proliferation of rapid coronavirus tests in order to overcome Covid-19.

While giving immunizations is vital, we should not rob our existing surveillance infrastructure to do so. As long as the virus continues to circulate at pandemic levels, testing will remain essential, to diagnose and isolate cases and to screen for asymptomatic infections.

The nation reached record highs for daily cases in January, with more than 300,000 cases reported on Jan. 8; this week the seven-day average number of daily new cases is down to 57,400. But as more contagious coronavirus variants emerge and lockdown measures are relaxed, the nation needs to intensify, not scale back, nationwide testing efforts. ...

We need to quickly provide resources to states to restore their testing efforts and make less expensive rapid tests available so that testing can occur in homes, schools and businesses. We also need to remind Americans of the continued importance of getting tested if they develop symptoms or are exposed to Covid-19.

The pandemic has demonstrated the danger of complacency. The detection of potentially more contagious genetic variants sounded an alarm for countries like the United Kingdom and France, which had dialed back on their public health control measures.

We will not get ahead of this virus if we continue to respond by diverting limited public health resources from one important area to another. Vaccines offer the promise of a path out of this pandemic, but only in conjunction with other strategies, especially coronavirus testing.