Pressure rises for rapid COVID-19 testing | TheHill

In a speech in October, he called for a “faster, cheaper screening test, that you can take right at home or in school,” and his transition team’s coronavirus plan includes a call to “invest in next-generation testing, including at home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude.”President TrumpDonald John TrumpBen Carson says he's 'out of the woods' after being 'extremely sick' with COVID-19 Biden will receive @POTUS Twitter account on Jan. 20 even if Trump doesn't concede, company says Trump to participate in virtual G-20 summit amid coronavirus surge MORE, in contrast, has frequently downplayed the need for more testing. “FDA is always open to alternative proposals from developers and will continue to consider those,” they wrote.Backers of the rapid tests say the FDA is taking too narrow of a view, and that when rapid tests are used frequently on a wide scale they will help catch many more cases than a smaller number of somewhat more-accurate tests would. Mina said the government needs to take a far more active role in providing funding to ramp up manufacturing of rapid tests, rather than relying on small startup companies to do the work themselves.