The United States has conducted over 5 million coronavirus tests, and there are plans for doubling this effort by the end of May. However, President Donald Trump says that this is because American healthcare officials are accurate when it comes to reporting U.S. cases, citing China as an example of underreported cases.

In the press conference this Tuesday, President Trump acknowledged that the federal government has built more than 11,000 extra beds, shipped or delivered hundreds of millions of personal protective equipment, and distributed over 10,000 ventilators with more being produced to provide to allied countries.


Massive Volumes of Tests

In comparison to the 10,000 tests per day in the month prior, the coordination and collaboration of the commercial laboratories have made it possible to do over 50,000 tests a day.

"We are currently operating 45 percent of the current test sites and 25 locations across eight states," Rite Aid CEO Heyward Donigan said. That number is roughly 15,000 tests a day.

Quest Diagnostics CEO Steve Rusckowski said that by the end of May, they planned to go up to "250,000 tests per day so that by the end of next month, the U.S. will have 10 million tests done."

Similarly, other companies have aimed to double, or even triple, this effort by May.

Currently, there were 200,000 Walgreen employees in stores taking care of patients and customers by providing them services like COVID-19 testing and medication prescriptions.

"We're planning to expand triple the amount [of tests] by the end of the month," Richard Ashworth, President of Walgreens, said.

John Nims, CEO of U.S. Cotton, said that their Cleveland operation would involve moving from the Q-tip swab to a polyester tip so that it can be assembled into the testing kits. This was further supported by Admiral Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. He announced that U.S. Cotton would start delivery of 3 million swabs per week for test kits.

"We saw the production of lots of test kits going into the marketplace. The old system would never be able to process the tests at the massive volume we need in the midst of an epidemic," Vice President Mike Pence said.

He commended Trump for sitting down with commercial laboratory companies. "We need you to turn all of your energy loose for the kind of high-speed testing that would be necessary for us to reach the numbers we did today."


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Opening Up America Again

There was also the issue of vulnerable populations having difficulties acquiring services from healthcare centers.

CEO of CVS Larry Merlo recognized that the virus was "disproportionately affecting our minority communities, so we're working with organizations like the National Medical Associations to bring testing and care to the traditionally underserved communities."

Their operation runs a thousand pharmacies across five states. Merlo said that CVS drive-thrus and parking lots would be utilized for swab testing.

"There have been so many unnecessary deaths in this country," Trump said. Referring to the Chinese government's lack of initiative, he went on, "It could've been stopped, and it could've been stopped short, but somebody a long time ago, it seems, decided not to do it that way, and the whole world is suffering because of it."

He added that the federal authorities were looking into the source of the coronavirus in China. "We're doing severe investigations, and we're not happy with China. We believe it could've been stopped at the source we believe it could've been stopped quickly."

He continued by saying that for some time, his administration has encouraged governors in their respective states to leverage unused capacity, and the end result has been a surge in testing. This Saturday alone, nearly 200,000 tests were reported.

"Testing will not be a problem," Trump assured. He emphasized that all efforts must be pooled into mitigating the spread of the pandemic so that establishments in the country can reopen as soon as possible.

"We're reporting very accurately," Trump said. "If you look at China, you can look at numerous countries where I don't think there are the right numbers."