Report Analyzes Federal Health Programs’ COVID-19 Testing Efforts in First Months of Pandemic

The COVID-19 outbreak caught the country and the world totally off guard. And even as the pandemic intensifies, the lessons from those first crucial months hold the key to managing not only coronavirus but also future public health crises, particularly with regard to diagnostic testing. A new government report offers sheds new light on one big part of the early efforts to meet the historically unprecedented demand for COVID-19 testing, namely, the role of federal agencies directly involved in administering or paying for tests. Here is a breakdown of the report’s findings and the insights it offers for mass scale testing efforts in both the near- and long-term future. The PRAC Report Published on Jan. 14, 2021, the Federal COVID-19 Testing Report: Data Insights from Six Federal Health Care Programs report is the work of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC). In case you have not heard the name, PRAC is a new federal agency established by the CARES Act to promote transparency and perform independent oversight over spending of CARES Act and other related federal emergency bill funds. Its responsibilities include supporting efforts to “prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement [and] mitigate major risks that cut across […]