As social distancing continues to slow the spread of coronavirus around the country, Americans are eager to know when life will begin to return to normal. People are looking to the federal government for answers on when they can get back to work, when their kids can go back to school, when they can gather together with friends and so much more.

 

But rather than create a plan based on the advice of our nation’s top public health experts, the Trump administration seems to be pulling dates out of a hat when suggesting when the country should lift social distancing measures.

 

First, President Donald Trump said the nation would need just 15 days to slow the spread of the virus. Then, he said he hoped to reopen the country by Easter. Now, as the holiday weekend has come and gone, he’s floating a May goal.

 

There’s a reason his promises keep falling flat: The president has failed — from day one — to develop a robust national testing strategy, in part because of his refusal to fully invoke his powers under the Defense Production Act.

 

Right now in the United States, there are nearly 750,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. And the number of deaths, on Sunday, sadly reached more than 35,000.

 

If the Trump administration is serious about saving American lives — and quickly reopening the country — it needs to facilitate the large-scale production and rapid deployment of precise coronavirus testing, as other countries have done.

 

This plan must include a continued investment in widespread diagnostic tests, which determine if someone currently has coronavirus, as well as accurate antibody, or serology, tests to help combat the future spread of the coronavirus.

 

These blood tests can help determine whether someone has ever been infected with the coronavirus and which people could be protected from reinfection. The tests will be a key tool to help people get back to work. They’ll also be especially important for the nation’s frontline health care workers to determine who can more safely continue treating coronavirus patients.

 

While Dr. Anthony Fauci said two weeks ago that a large number of antibody tests will soon be available, these tests without a national development and deployment strategy will be ineffective at helping us reopen the country.

 

As it currently stands, we simply don’t have the capacity, or equipment, needed to run existing diagnostic tests, and that’s before adding millions of additional antibody tests into the mix.

 

Though FDA reports they are sending millions of diagnostic tests out, the reality from health care providers and laboratory technicians I’ve spoken with on the frontlines tells a different story. While tests are arriving, the swabs, reagents, pipets and other supplies needed to run these tests are not.

 

This isn’t a problem unique to the United States. In a phone conversation last week, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told me that the global demand on the supply chain for this testing equipment is the “the biggest challenge right now.”

 

Take what happened in San Miguel County, Colorado as an example. Late last month, more than 6,000 of the county’s 8,000 residents got a free coronavirus antibody test. The goal was to help determine who had been exposed to the virus and then use that data to manage the spread moving forward.

 

But last week, residents got news that the results would be “delayed indefinitely” due to a reduced ability to process the tests. If we are unable to efficiently get test results for 6,000 people in Colorado, the idea of effectively testing millions of people across the country seems nothing more than a pipe dream.

 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The president has the tools, through the Defense Production Act, to immediately produce and distribute the equipment needed to facilitate these tests. Since the Korean War, this law has been routinely invoked, and in fact, the Trump administration itself uses the DPA hundreds of thousands of times every year.

 

As I wrote to Vice President Mike Pence and other members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, in order to rapidly deploy these tests throughout the country, President Trump must fully invoke the DPA to increase production of FDA-approved serology tests, including all the necessary equipment and supplies needed to manufacture and process them.

 

At the same time, we need to ensure that our nation’s health experts at CDC, NIH, and the National Health Service Corps develop clear guidelines for state and local officials on how to interpret test results and, if appropriate, begin to ease restrictions on social distancing.

 

Of course, a national testing strategy must also address the accuracy of these tests. In recent weeks, more than 70 companies have signed up to sell antibody tests. But already, we have seen disturbing reports of fraudulent tests. As chair of the congressional panel that oversees our nation’s health care industry, I’m deeply concerned that the FDA is not prepared to effectively regulate these tests.

 

Given our current challenges, it’s clear that we won’t be able to simply flick a switch and reopen the country. And every day that the president fails to put together a national testing strategy, this crisis threatens to accelerate further out of control. Without such a plan, his May goal will slip to June, and more Americans will struggle to make ends meet.

 

Enough with the guessing games. If the Trump administration is intent on quickly reopening the country, they need a real plan, one that includes the necessary infrastructure for widespread national testing. Only then will we be ready to transition back to normal life.