The US is significantly behind on testing people for coronavirus compared to countries like South Korea and China, due to a series of delays and missteps trying to develop and roll out its own testing kits.
However, the US is finally starting to increase its testing capacity. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that New York had processed 10,000 new coronavirus tests overnight. He said that the state is now testing at a higher per-capita rate than South Korea or China — though it still lags far behind those countries in terms of the total number of people tested.
New York opened its first drive-through testing facility this week in New Rochelle, which has been the epicenter of the state’s earliest confirmed cases. Additional locations have sprung up as the US attempts to make up for lost time.
“We’ve been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in the critical locations identified by public-health officials,” President Trump said in a news conference last week.
The US now appears following the lead of South Korea, which has tested more than 140,000 people — many via drive-through locations that can administer tests in under 10 minutes, Reuters reported. This approach also helps limit healthcare workers’ exposure to the coronavirus.
Here’s what the drive-through operations look like across the US.