Congress: 'Faster and freer' virus testing needed

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis's chairman emphasized Wednesday that testing was the key component to getting the country back to work during the pandemic.

In the subcommittee's first hearing on reopening the economy, chairman South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn said the U.S. needed  "a comprehensive, coordinated and centralized strategy for faster and freer testing."

Dr. Ashish Jha, Harvard Global Health Institute Director, told the committee "we must do better " in efforts to combat COVID19 and reopening the country depended on "robust testing."

"Testing is critical. Testing tells us who has the disease and who doesn't. And testing is the cornerstone of controlling every single disease outbreak," he said.

The ranking member of the committee, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump opened his remarks in the briefing saying that as some states have already started Phase 1 of reopening this should be used as a template for moving forward.