We agreed that the state government should be responsible for managing the actual tests in their own laboratories. We have about 300 laboratories in the State of New York. We regulate those laboratories. It's up to a state to determine how many tests, where those tests should be done, New York City versus Buffalo versus Long Island, et cetera, the staff to do those tests, how often you do the tests - those should all be state decisions and state responsibilities. The antibody test, which is one of the tests, how do you use those, when - that should all be up to the states.
The tracing function - that is the function after testing that actually traces people who are positive, who did they come in contact with, to isolate them - that's all the state's responsibility.
The problem with testing and bringing testing up to scale has been the national manufacturers of the equipment who make the testing kits that they have to send to the state labs so the state labs can actually perform them. Those are done by national manufacturers. The national manufacturers have said they have a problem with the supply chain to quickly ramp up those tests. They need swabs, they need vials and they need chemicals, quote, unquote reagents.
That is where the federal government can help. States cannot do international supply chains. You shouldn't have 50 states competing to do international supply chains. Let the federal government take responsibility for that federal supply chain for the national manufacturers. That's what we agreed in this meeting.
That is an intelligent division of labor, in my opinion. Let each level of government do what it does best and it ends this back and forth, what do the states do, what does Washington do, who's responsible, et cetera.
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