Some Members of Congress were concerned they couldn’t get testing on demand for coronavirus, while the rest of the country lacks testing. The Administration was going to make sufficient testing capacity to these government leaders, but Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi declined that as a bad look.

Good news: as the Senate reconvenes to do important work for the American people during this public health crisis, we have now received an initial request and are sending 3 Abbott point of care testing machines and 1,000 tests for their use.

— Secretary Alex Azar (@SecAzar) May 2, 2020

All of Austin is currently averaging 121 tests per day. The population of Travis County is approximately 1.3 million.

In mid-April it seemed like the best place to get coronavirus testing might be the Dubai airport. And since they were running tests right away, it might even be faster to fly there, get tested, and come home. However the plan there was only to deploy testing for passengers heading to destinations that required a negative test for entry.

Now, however, testing is available to anyone who wants it at the Vienna airport at a cost of $210. And Vienna is much closer than Dubai. Starting Monday testing is available:

• To arriving passengers, because testing negative will avoid the requirement of a 14 day quarantine (a passenger could also present a testing certificate not more than four days old).
  
• To departing passengers, heading to a destination that requires a testing certificate.

The airport is offering PCR tests. This is far from a foolproof solution. The problem is that these tests, in at least one study, have been shown to have a 30% false negative rate. People may have the virus and still test negative. This is mostly an issue of faulty sample collection, though someone early or late-stage may have low virus levels that do not show up (but that may appear later).

Nonetheless massive scale imperfect testing has been shown to be sufficient to keep the virus in check if it is accompanied by quarantining and contact tracing.

And this could work far better than highlighting negative online reviews to attract tourists. Anyone for coronavirus test followed by a night in Vienna?

(HT: One Mile at a Time)