as we've established as your hearing day and night across the country there's this urgent need for testing and contact tracing on a massive scale and so our reporting team has the latest on the race to contain this virus NBC News technology correspondent Jacob Ward reports that contact tracing apps could soon help track the spread of this in this country but first NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk has our report on testing and the road to reopen the battle in the fight against kovat boils down to one thing testing no one ever imagined this testing system was going to become hyper relevant to survival a new study in Los Angeles indicates the number of people that have or had kovat 19 may be up to 55 times higher than previously known public health experts say it is not something states can handle alone to ask the states to go about finding their own solutions is a recipe for disaster dr.
dan hanfling has worked on national preparedness planning programs for President Obama and Trump he says the Trump administration's guidelines don't go far enough that misses the mark widely because we don't have the means for either testing or contact tracing both critically important if we are to understand prevalence of disease it's a fantasy to think that we're going to be able to reopen safely in the absence of those capabilities right now a million people are being tested a week a number experts say needs to triple Vice Admiral Raquel bono oversees Washington state's response to kovat 19 she says state labs could be processing more than twice the number of tests but lack critical supplies in swabs and transport medium as well as as reagents the person who is using the swab and taking the sample also has to be in PPE and each state is competing for these supplies we're all pitted against each other trying to get the supplies that we know we need another obstacle test accuracy health officials tell NBC News there in accurate diagnostic and antibody tests showing false positives or false negatives it is less accurate than we had hoped and so there was a whole lot of false positives it points out to the importance of being able to accurately and rigorously develop these tests so that we don't inadvertently put people at harm without testing on a massive scale we lack a clear picture of when stay-at-home orders can be lifted but a recent report by 48 economists and social scientists suggests it can be done quickly dr.
Danielle Allen of Harvard University is the lead author the best approach is one where we open and stay open the way you open and stay openness by having the capacity to control the disease controlling the disease she says will require 5 million tests a day in order to start lifting restrictions in June ramping up to 20 million tests a day by August but the key to getting there is National Coordination she suggests the federal government create a pandemic testing board to supervise testing contact tracing and supply chain issues how important is that centralized effort to having success in testing you really do need that centralized coordination in order to move things faster than the market itself could achieve the argument among those who want to open up quickly is that we are going to have such dramatic economic costs in this country that it is the pain is not going to be worth it and the argument we make with them is that the path we're proposing gives you a stronger recovery that plan estimates national testing tracing and isolation would cost 15 billion dollars a month compared to the cost of stay at home orders 350 billion a month and if no action is taken and restrictions lifted there would be a sharp increase in deaths costing 15 to 20 trillion the researchers say economic growth and testing go hand in hand this is a moment for a new America to show up we can do this again no law of physics has to be broken it is purely a question of organizing ourselves to deliver on the capacity that we already have Stephanie Gosk NBC News hey there I'm Chris Hayes from MSNBC thanks for watching MSNBC on YouTube if you want to keep up date with the videos we're putting out you can click subscribe just below me or click over on this list to see lots of other great videos.
