Testing is “still not completely fixed” across the entire nation, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday.
“The other thing that's a problem — still not completely fixed, but fixed in many areas of the country, but not all — is the delay between the time you do the test and you get the result back,” he said during a Tuesday town hall with Healthline.com.
If tests results take “five to seven days, it almost obviates the purpose of contact tracing, because that means somebody was out there for five to seven days potentially spreading the infection,” he said.
“We are correcting that — we're trying hard and we are correcting it in many areas," Fauci said.
But clear and fast results are needed to calculate an important metric: percent positivity.
“You look at New York City right now it's less than 1%. That's what you want the whole country to be,” he said.
“There are parts of the country where it's 15, 18, 20% — that's really high,” he said. “The percent of your tests that you do that are actually positive it's got to be a very low number,” he said.