Frustrated Oregonians who can’t get tested for coronavirus may find solace in this: You’re like almost everyone else in America.

The number of Oregonians tested through Friday morning stood at 367. That’s similar to – if not higher than – many comparable states across the country, The Oregonian/OregonLive found.

But that doesn’t mean enough Oregonians are being tested. They’re not, as state officials have acknowledged.

Chunhuei Chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, said state officials must take more aggressive action. He said the state should spend more money to increase public health staffing, so more infections can be identified and close contacts of those people can be quarantined at home.

Chi also said the Oregon Health Authority should expand who can be checked with state tests to include non-hospitalized people who have flu-like symptoms but test negative for influenza. That will prevent those people from potentially spreading coronavirus to others, he said.

“If you want to contain this, we have to be more aggressive,” he said. “Not just testing. But testing the right people.”

The lack of testing in America has become a flashpoint as the pandemic rages, with more than 2,000 infections identified nationally. Inadequate testing means the true number of COVID-19 cases is dramatically undercounted in Oregon and elsewhere.

Federal officials for weeks have failed to provide states with easy access to tests, and officials in Oregon have been rationing those tests for the highest-risk people. State officials say they have enough tests at the state lab for up to 4,800 people but have not dramatically expanded eligibility, pledging – but then walking back – assurances that state hospital systems and private labs would be online next week with tests that would be easier to access.

Oregon has now identified at least 30 people with coronavirus, including eight elderly men at a veterans’ nursing home in Lebanon. No one has died.

Gov. Kate Brown on Friday took aim at the federal government for not providing Oregon with more tests, blaming national leaders a day after she issued contradictory statements about whether Oregon had enough tests.

“We need more capacity,” she said.

It’s unclear how many tests are available to states and how many people have been tested. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes data on identified infections but not on how many Americans have been checked for coronavirus.

The Oregonian/OregonLive contacted or obtained data from 18 other states to try to understand how this state stacks up amid the national shortage.

Oregon’s testing volume looks terrible compared to states like California, which has tested about 2,000 residents, and Washington, where more than 6,600 residents have been checked. But those states have huge testing capacity thanks to numerous state health labs or a big university.

Those states have also identified hundreds of infections, with about 570 in Washington and about 250 in California.

New York, which now has more than 400 cases, had tested at least 2,300 people as of Thursday. Massachusetts, which has more than 100 infections, declined to say how many people have been tested.

Florida and Colorado, meanwhile, have each tested more than 500 people. Colorado recently opened up a drive-thru location, collecting samples Thursday from 326 people who waited in line for four to five hours, a state spokesperson said.

Other states have tested fewer people than Oregon.

Texas, for instance, reported 39 infections as of Friday at noon. But only 220 people had been tested, a state spokeswoman said.

Pennsylvania had 41 infections but tested only about 190 people, according to its website. And Louisiana, which has 36 cases, tested only 108 people at its state lab.

The five states with confirmed infections just below Oregon’s total had, on average, tested only about 100 people each.

Chi, the Oregon State University professor, said the tallies are informative. But he said that since the entire country has been “grossly undertesting,” the real question about prevalence remains unanswered.

“We need to interpret those comparisons with caution,” he said. “One big unknown is, we don’t know how many or the percentage of the population that is infected.”

Nik Blosser, the governor’s chief of staff, said Oregon’s location between Washington and California puts the state in a hot spot that clearly requires more testing to identify infections.

“We’re just desperate for more testing, period,” he said.

But he was reluctant to say the Oregon Health Authority should change its criteria for testing eligibility at the state lab, holding out hope that one if not two hospital systems could begin testing next week.

“I don’t think people care which lab they get tested at,” he said, “as long as they get tested.”

-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt