The Community-Based Testing Site program would end up serving just 116,234 people in its first month, according to an internal tracker obtained by POLITICO. State officials and public health experts lamented the missed opportunity to test more people and slow the virus’ spread. The episode has been held up as a prime example of the White House’s unrealistic coronavirus proclamations, like the president’s March 6 pledge that “anybody that wants a test can get a test” — a promise that remains unfulfilled nearly two months later.
Yet inside the administration, and among its retail partners, the drive-thru effort has been viewed quite differently: as a successful prototype. The team that assembled the drive-thru initiative in about 96 hours — a coalition of administration technocrats, career civil servants and private-sector volunteers who were rapidly thrown together the day before Trump’s Rose Garden remarks — has become the heart of White House efforts to conquer the all-consuming problem of producing enough tests to safely reopen the economy this month…
Public health experts say the need remains far greater, but acknowledged the improvements. “I think the administration is at a C now because they’re at least meeting the needs in a pandemic,” said a former Trump administration official, noting that the Kushner team had inherited an F after the administration’s lab-testing strategy failed across February. “But they’re not an A or B yet because we’re not getting ahead of the problem.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member