April 27 Coronavirus Update from the Trump Administration

Unprecedented Testing Regime

• President Trump has led a historic effort to rapidly scale up testing across the nation and meet the unprecedented challenge posed by the coronavirus.
• Over the weekend, President Trump announced that the United States has conducted more than 5 million tests, far surpassing any other nation.
• Local hot spots in the U.S. have conducted more tests per capita than Singapore and South Korea.
• To continue building on these efforts, President Trump signed new legislation on Friday providing $25 billion for testing.

Rapidly Ramped-Up Testing

• At President Trump’s direction, his Administration has cut red tape to spur innovation and get quality tests to the market as soon as possible.
  • FDA COMMISSIONER HAHN ON FRIDAY: “As part of these efforts to support diagnostic test development during this global pandemic, the President has asked us, and under his leadership, to actually cut down as many barriers as we possibly could to get medical products into the medical community, and we have done that, of course recognizing the urgency of the situation.”
• The FDA has quickly provided emergency authorizations for dozens of diagnostic and antibody coronavirus tests.
  • FDA COMMISSIONER HAHN ON FRIDAY: “To date, under our emergency use authorization approach, we’ve quickly reviewed and authorized 63 tests, both diagnostic, as well as serologic — that is the antibody test.
• President Trump’s approach is getting new, innovative tests to the frontlines as soon as possible – allowing more point-of-care testing and even at-home testing.
  • FDA COMMISSIONER HAHN ON FRIDAY: “We’ve had several point-of-care tests, and that’s important because those can be done in the emergency room or in a doctor’s office, et cetera, and much more convenient for the patient.”
  • FDA COMMISSIONER HAHN ON FRIDAY: “And this week, as the President said, we authorized the first at-home test by a company called LabCorp.  This is a test where, under certain circumstances, with a doctor’s supervision, a test can be mailed to a patient and the patient can perform the self-swab and then mail it back and get the results after that time — all under the guidance of a licensed physician.”