White House's COVID-19 testing is so inadequate it's like 'giving squirt guns to the Secret Service': Expert

On CNN Wednesday, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy Director Michael Osterholm warned that the White House's current testing protocols will not be effective in protecting senior White House officials from coronavirus outbreaks.

"You have to understand that a test is not just a single thing that happens," said Osterholm. "You have to be testing the right population. Why are you testing these people? Today if I tested every citizen in the state of Minnesota for antibody, I'd probably find over half of them that have it, are false positive antibodies, meaning they don't have it. I'm testing certain groups that I need to have absolute certainty that I've screened out for the virus like we saw at the White House two weeks ago. We know that test didn't do that at all. Those are not examples of smart testing."

"It's pretty alarming, Michael, that even in the White House, the testing they're doing, you're saying that's not smart testing," said anchor Anderson Cooper.

"That was not smart testing at all," said Osterholm. "I mean, trying to use that test as it was used to protect the president of the United States is like giving squirt guns to the Secret Service and say, protect the president. That was just not an effective use of that test because there were clearly examples we could have false negatives, many of them. And so, again, testing is important, but you've got to use the right test, and how you use it."

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