Bill Gates has slammed the Covid-19 testing in the US stating that most tests are a complete waste since they take too long for the results to be out.
The former CEO and founder of Microsoft believe that results should come sooner to allow people to change their behavior to avoid infecting others.
“The simplest thing, which has to do with such insanity, is you should not reimburse somebody for getting a test that it takes more than 48 hours to get the result back,” Gates told CNBC on Tuesday.
Gates termed it “insane” for people to pay for tests results that could take more than three days or more to be out.
During the early stages of the pandemic, the US was slow to roll out testing nationwide and experts say the turnaround times to get the results have interfered with the county’s ability to slow the spread of coronavirus.
Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services concur with Gates that the testing within the country needs to be improved.
“I started 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 testing everywhere. We are not there yet. We are doing everything we can to do that,” Giroir told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union”.
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According to Giroir half, the testing done in the US is conducted at large commercials labs with the average turnaround for test results 4.27 days stating that the country needs to continually improve its ecosystem.
Currently, the US tests about 733,242 which is nearly triple the number of tests that were administered near the end of April, according to data from the coronavirus Tracking Project.
Philanthropist Gates has so far donated hundreds of millions of dollars to treatment and vaccine research for coronavirus through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
