America is finally testing for coronavirus in significant volumes

Enlarge / Patients wait in their cars for drive-through COVID-19 testing at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, IL on Thursday. The hospital suspended drive-through testing on Friday due to a shortage of test kits. (credit: Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica)

America is finally starting to test for the coronavirus in significant volumes. On Thursday, the total number of coronavirus tests conducted in America topped 100,000, according to the COVID tracking project. That's a 10-fold increase from a week earlier. In the coming days, we can expect the pace of testing to continue increasing as more and more organizations-both academic labs and for-profit companies-ramp up testing efforts.

This is important because America has a lot of catching up to do. A series of early missteps at the federal level hampered America's testing efforts in the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis. It wasn't until the end of February that the Food and Drug Administration opened the door for a wide range of organizations to offer coronavirus tests.

In the last week, we've started to see the results of that change. Private companies are starting to ship hundreds of thousands of tests. Drive-through testing stations are sprouting up all over America.

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