US Administration To Allocate USD 11 billion To States For Coronavirus Testing

"We are announcing USD 11 billion being sent to the states. This to directly support testing," the official said during a briefing on Monday.

US President Donald Trump has said he will most likely be tested for the novel coronavirus, stressing that he had displayed no symptoms.

New Delhi: In a desperate bid to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Donald Trump administration will allocate USD 11 billion to states in the United States to ramp up coronavirus testing, a White House official announced on Monday.

"We are announcing USD 11 billion being sent to the states. This to directly support testing," the official said during a briefing on Monday.

The fund will be provided from the CARES Act, already approved by Congress, and signed into law by US President Donald Trump, Sputnik reported.

"States will be providing us within just a couple of weeks a full testing program, where we have asked them to supply their strategy and specific deliverables and goals to test not only those who need a diagnosis because they are sick, but also for contact tracing and surveillance of those in the community because we know there is quite a bit of an asymptomatic carriage of this virus," the official said.

During the briefing, President Donald Trump said that the United States will complete 10 million coronavirus testings this week.

"This week the United States will pass 10 million tests conducted, nearly double the number of any other country. We are testing more people per capita than South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland, and many other countries, in some cases combined," Trump said at a White House briefing.

As of Monday morning, the figure stood at 9 million tests, accelerating by 300,000 per day.So far, 80,000 people have died from coronavirus in the US due to coronavirus. The country has reported 1,344,512 cases overall, according to the data.