WASHINGTON - With some states gearing up to lift coronavirus restrictions, a new poll finds a potential obstacle to keeping new infections tamped down.
Nearly 1 in 10 adults say cost would keep them from seeking treatment if they thought they were infected.
The Gallup-West Health Healthcare Costs Survey out Tuesday found that younger people, members of minority groups, people with less than a college degree, and those making less than $40,000 a year were more likely to say they would avoid seeking treatment.
That could create a blind spot for governors trying to calibrate economic reopening plans to keep watch for potential virus flare-ups.
According to John Hopkins - 56,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus and the number of Americans who have tested positive is nearly at one million. Since January - about 1.7 percent of the population in the U.S. has been tested.
To address the shortfall of testing, the Trump Administration released a national plan - but it does put much of the responsibility on individual states. Under the initiative, all 50 states will receive enough tests to screen 2.6 percent of their populations every month.
Executives from CVS and Walgreens, who met with the president yesterday, said they are ramping up testing at stores around the country.
"Our blueprint describes how states should unlock their full capacity, expand the number of testing platforms, establish monitoring systems to detect local outbreaks, and conduct contact tracing," president Trump explained.
Those that want the test have to be showing symptoms and they will also have to book an appointment online, depending on where they plan on getting it done.
The White House released new guidelines aimed at answering criticism that America’s coronavirus testing has been too slow, and President Donald Trump is trying to pivot toward a focus on “reopening” the nation.
Public health experts are expressing doubt that the White House’s new coronavirus testing targets are sufficient. The “blueprint” unveiled by the administration calls for states to scale up their testing in the coming week — a tacit admission, despite public statements to the contrary, that testing capacity and availability over the past two months have been lacking. But President Donald Trump declared that “testing is not going to be a problem at all.”
The new testing targets would ensure states had enough COVID-19 tests available to sample at least 2.6% of their populations each month, which is a figure already met by a majority of states. Areas that have been harder hit by the virus would be able to test at double that rate, or higher. Still, there are doubts from public health experts that the White House’s new testing targets are sufficient.
