While step one is breaking the logjam to scale up production and use of these tests, the White House should also treat rapid testing with the same urgency and private sector partnership approach that Operation Warp Speed pioneered for vaccines. For such a program to succeed, there needs to be close collaboration across government agencies, so that everyone involved in the process — in regulation, supply chain, distribution channels, public health protocols, results verification and reporting and public education and marketing — is working together toward the same goal, to make rapid testing accessible and available to all Americans at little to no cost.

The U.S. government should provide rapid tests to every American household, business and organization for free to complement the vaccination campaign and make abiding by the vaccine mandate more feasible. The investment could yield significant health and economic benefits. Past economic analyses predicted that a major government-funded rapid testing program that reached every American could add as much as $50 billion to the gross domestic product and save tens of thousands of lives or more…

Before rapid tests, people had to assume they could be contagious from Covid-19. That’s why people isolated themselves, and businesses and schools closed. It is why people missed holidays with their families. But by embracing rapid testing alongside vaccination, people can live with the virus. Workplaces can sustainably reopen. Children can stay in school. The United States should use rapid testing as a complement to the vaccine to put forward a multifaceted defense against Covid-19. Our leaders must work quickly to make this a reality.