It’s hard to tell from watching President Donald Trump and members of his Coronavirus Task Force just how many people can be tested for coronavirus in the U.S. and whether there’s enough testing capacity to reopen the economy.

Task force officials have been citing the millions of swabs and test tubes now in production as manufacturers ramp up capacity. They handed out lists of labs in each state to governors this week, suggesting that states just haven’t been asking labs to do the work.



But doubling the number of tests conducted from the current 1 million per week, as the White House recommends, is far more complicated than that. In addition to solving the complex global supply chain problems with test and lab materials, it will likely require large purchases of high-speed lab equipment and greater national coordination.






And health experts outside the government say that the true testing need is even greater. They predict it will take 4 million to 30 million tests per week to begin reopening the country, and keep it open, until a vaccine becomes available — which could take months or even years.



Here’s the latest on why the testing problem isn’t solved yet.