The Washington Post’s Philip Bump published an analysis piece today titled “The reality of coronavirus testing continues to differ from Trump’s claims.” It’s actually a bit difficult to tell what claims the piece is faulting Trump for making. I’ve highlighted a few time cues in the piece:

During the daily White House coronavirus press briefing early last week, President Trump praised the country’s testing regimen for the virus.

“We have now done 1,790,000 tests nationwide,” Trump said. “That’s more than any other country in the world, hence we have more cases. And that number is growing by nearly 125,000 people per day. Think of that one. So it’s growing by 125,000 people per day.”

“I told you about South Korea,” he added. “This is a, you know, vastly faster — and we also have, they say, the most accurate of tests.”…

As it turns out, though, Trump’s confidence in the U.S. testing process wasn’t as solid as he presented last week. Reuters reported on Monday morning that South Korea would send 600,000 of its own test kits to the United States this week after Trump specifically requested them last month.

So, in case that timeline is still not clear, last month (March 25th) Trump requested tests from South Korea. And then last week, he said testing was going well and the U.S. test was the most accurate. That’s the gotcha moment, I guess. I see some problems with this. For starters, Trump’s request for test kits from South Korea isn’t news. It was widely reported back on March 25th:

South Korea’s president said Donald Trump asked South Korea for help with coronavirus testing kits and other equipment, and officials offered to send what they could as the United States struggles to cope with the pandemic…

Trump made the request during a 23-minute phone conversation to discuss cooperation against the virus, according to the Blue House.

During the call Trump also promised to push the FDA to clear the tests for import. Two weeks later, when Trump made his comments about testing, the number of tests was up substantially and it continues to climb.

Bump looks at data from the Covid Tracking Project and argues there was a slow down in the increase in testing right at the time Trump made the request to South Korea. His graphs show the number of tests per day continues to increase, just not as quickly as before. Bump then speculates on the reasons for this:

Some of the reasons for the slowdown are primarily administrative. The San Francisco Bay area has a testing system in place run by Verily, a company that’s part of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. During a news briefing last month, Trump announced that the Verily program would bring screening and testing to the entire country. As of writing, though, it covers only a handful of counties. What’s more, a spokesperson for the company told The Post that even the existing sites aren’t operating at full capacity, limited to about 200 tests a day by the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) in order “to keep capacity sustainable while minimizing risk to healthcare professionals delivering acute care.”

That’s all true but what Bump doesn’t mention is that plans to roll out drive-thru testing around the country weren’t limited to the Verily effort in the Bay Area. As I pointed out last week, CVS is adding two-new testing sites which should be capable of up to 3,000 tests per day and Walgreens is adding 15 sites in seven states. This morning, Walmart announced it would be adding 20 test sites in 10 states by the end of this month:

The retailer has been working with the federal government to set up drive-thru testing sites in its parking lots. The first two sites opened in the Chicago area on March 22.

“We currently have three sites open, and we have plans to expand testing to multiple sites next week with the goal of having more than 20 sites in more than 10 states by the end of the month,” a Walmart spokesperson said. “We have been learning a lot from our initial sites so that we can get the model right and are working hard to help expand testing in areas of need as quickly as possible.”

The spokesperson added: “We remain committed to supporting government efforts to expand COVID-19 drive-thru testing during this critical time, and we are working closely with Quest Diagnostics, HHS, and several states to open sites in areas of need.”

So the push for drive-thru testing continues to expand around the country and the retailers involved have already set up their own pre-screening websites to allow people to make appointments. It’s odd that Bump would discuss Trump’s drive-thru testing initiative as if it were stalled in the Bay Area and not mention that it’s continuing to expand around the country as we speak.