#Trump official admits COVID-19 test results take too long to come back

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Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services
Merrily Cassidy/Cape Cod Times via AP

President Trump’s point man on coronavirus testing in the US acknowledged Sunday that the turnaround time for results is too slow — with about half of the tests taking more than four days to come back.

Doctors have said speedy results are crucial to keeping the virus at bay, since the quicker people know they are infected, the faster they can isolate themselves.

“I started out by saying that we are never going to be happy with testing until we get turnaround times within 24 hours, and I would be happy with point-of-care [doctors’ office] testing everywhere. We are not there yet,” Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, told CNN’s “State of the Union.

“We are doing everything we can to do that.

“We need to continually improve our ecosystem.”

Giroir said roughly 25 percent of tests are done at doctors’ offices or clinics, where samples are handled in-house and results can come back as soon as 15 minutes.

Another 25 percent are performed at hospitals, where the turnaround is about 24 hours, he said.

“The delays that most people talk about are at the large commercial labs that perform about half the testing in our country,” Giroir said.

He said average turnaround at those sites is 4.27 days.

“I follow that morning and evening, I know exactly when it’s ordered and when it’s resulted,” the health official said. “We are trying to bring that down.”