Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump says states should “seriously consider” reopening their public schools before the end of the academic year, even though dozens already have said it would be unsafe for students to return until the summer or fall.
Only a few have publicly considered earlier openings, including Montana, which says school districts can resume classroom instruction on May 7.
Trump’s suggestion in a call Monday with governors drew criticism from some education officials who say a quick return would bring major risk and little reward. None of the governors on the call responded to the suggestion.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2020
Meantime, the White House released new guidelines Monday aimed at answering criticism that America’s coronavirus testing has been too slow, and President Donald Trump tried to pivot toward a focus on “reopening” the nation.
The new testing targets would ensure states had enough COVID-19 tests available to sample at least 2.6% of their populations each month — a figure already met by a majority of states. Areas that have been harder hit by the virus would be able to test at double that rate, or higher, the White House said.
The testing issue has bedeviled the administration for months. Trump told reporters on March 6 during a visit to the CDC in Atlanta that “anybody that wants a test can get a test,” but the reality has proved to be vastly different.
The initial COVID-19 test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was contaminated, and early kits operated only on platforms able to perform a small number of tests per day. While the rate of testing increased as tests developed for higher-capacity platforms, they were still limited by shortages of supplies, from nasal swabs to the reagents used to process the samples.
Administration officials maintained Monday that the limiting factor now is actually the availability of samples from people who have been tested — either because guidelines on who could be tested are too stringent or because there are not enough health workers able to take nasal swab samples from them.
