I believe the last option is our best option. Here’s what that will require from us:

Do the detective work

The C.D.C. leads the world in the classic disease detective work that is needed to understand and contain Covid-19.

Yes, the agency’s initial test kits failed. But for nearly two months C.D.C. has provided working tests to public health laboratories throughout the country; this doesn’t meet the need for testing in local communities, doctors’ offices or hospitals. The White House, many parts of the federal government, and commercial labs and hospitals need to make testing much more widely available. In a structured response, one knowledgeable and trusted spokesperson would regularly provide systematic information not only on the number of tests but the actual turnaround time from test to results. It’s now unacceptably slow in many areas.

In hospitals and communities, we are weeks if not months away from having sufficient test capacity. Testing for antibodies may help, particularly if people who recover from Covid-19 are immune from repeat infection and can safely work and travel. The C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which Dr. Messonnier leads, has the laboratories, epidemiologists and experience to help determine the accuracy, role and implications of antibody testing.

Health care workers are the front line of our response, and they’re being sickened in droves. C.D.C.’s division of health care quality promotion has the world’s leading experts in health care safety. They can figure out how disease is spreading to these workers and collaborate with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and hospitals on how to stop it. They can also guide efforts to secure safe and attractive spaces to isolate infected people — and others they may have infected — if they don’t require hospitalization and cannot be safely cared for at home.

The C.D.C. should also guide what must become a giant public health effort to trace and track contacts of Covid-19 patients. In Wuhan, China, there were 1,800 contact tracing teams of five people, each led by an epidemiologist. The U.S. equivalent would number 300,000, working in the communities they live in and led by public health specialists. Recruits could include Peace Corps volunteers who were brought home when the pandemic spread, furloughed public employees, phone bank staff (since so much tracing work is done by phone), workers from health organizations, social service and nonprofit agencies, and recent graduates. Community and religious organizations, Meals-on-Wheels programs, businesses and others are well placed to provide services for cases and contacts who must remain in isolation or quarantine.

If this sounds like assembling an army, it is. Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C.’s director, notes that the agency has begun this work, an encouraging sign. But the agency will need to accelerate its effort to establish the protocols, structure and supervision of this army and begin training the recruits now.

Guide with data

Disease surveillance is wartime intelligence, and C.D.C. conducts surveillance better than any other agency in the world. Its relevant centers, working with its Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services, began releasing more of this information recently, including emergency department visits, test results, hospitalizations and deaths. The C.D.C. needs to continuously improve the quality, geographic precision and timeliness of this information, including by publicly sharing data on emergency room visits — an early indicator of changing disease rates.