Six months into the global coronavirus pandemic, Americans trying to navigate daily life remain trapped between a clear ideal — the country needs to test as many people as possible for the virus, as regularly as possible, for as long as possible — and the reality that there are nowhere near enough tests in the United States to do that.

Widespread testing is the key to opening schools and businesses safely. It’s the only way to get a handle on where the coronavirus is spreading, whether efforts to control it are working and what precautions are needed in any given community at any given moment. But funding shortfalls and bottlenecks mean that nearly every entity in the country is falling far short of that goal.

By most estimates, the United States is conducting fewer than five million tests per …continued .
[Source: New York Times]