US President Donald Trump, accused of initially minimizing the severity of the Covid-19 epidemic, declared a state of emergency in the United States on Friday. In a few days, we should see everywhere in the United States supermarket car parks transformed into a "drive-in" for coronavirus screening: we come to get tested while staying in our car ... If the head of the American state denies it, its announcements were aimed at catching up with the United States in the fight against the pandemic.
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A first defective screening kit
On the other side of the Atlantic, there is a glaring lack of screening tests. "Today we are announcing a new partnership with the private sector to increase and accelerate our ability to screen for coronavirus. We want to ensure that those who need a test can get it very quickly," said the president of United States during a press conference broadcast on Friday.
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This is not the case today: many Americans showing signs of infection report the same impossibility of being tested. At the origin of this shortage, there are the errors of the American administration, which refused the test perfected by the WHO to develop its own screening kit ... which turned out to be defective. The most affected states were not allowed to develop their own test.
It is now possible and private labs are used to fill the gap, but this sequence has delayed the detection of cases of coronavirus in the United States: with the increase in tests, the numbers should explode. To prepare, Republicans and Democrats managed to agree to unlock up to $ 50 billion (about 45 million euros).