WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th April, 2020) The United States needs to launch a $30 billion national plan to produce hundreds of millions of quick, free tests for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as the Trump administration has bungled the job, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday.
"We need a Manhattan Project: It involves a vaccine," Schumer told reporters in a phone press conference. "We want to require the Trump administration to develop a strategic plan to develop and optimize testing. ... We are calling for $30 billion in emergency funding for particularly rapid response tests."
Schumer said the US government needed to produce a federally coordinated plan to replace the chaotic "scattershot" approach to dealing with the crisis and providing medical supplies to deal with it that it was currently practicing.
"We urge Republicans to step up and join us [to] make this bipartisan with a Manhattan project for testing so that we can realistically talk about reopening the American economy ... Our testing capacity is woefully inadequate for the crisis," Schumer said.
There was still a serious shortage of testing equipment both in New York City and all across the United States, Schumer noted, adding that the problem was most acute in poor, rural and minority community areas.
