Bill Gates thinks our coronavirus tests are a ‘complete waste’ right now

[Andy Meek]

• For many people in the US, it's taking several days or longer to get the results of a coronavirus test back.
• For that reason, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thinks it's pretty much a "complete waste" to get a coronavirus test that takes that long to get results from.
• In the meantime, the people waiting on those results are in some cases walking around and potentially infecting other people without realizing it.

Some days, the number of newly identified positive coronavirus cases here where I live is a big scary number -- it topped 700, in fact, on one day a week or so ago, compared to early in the pandemic when we were freaking out here over 100 or so new positives in a single day. I live in Memphis, by the way, which is encompassed by Shelby County, and it's our county health department that's been tracking and announcing new cases as they come in.

Here lately, the numbers seem to be creeping higher and higher, such that it's actually kind of hard now to get a sense of the day-to-day trends anymore. That's because coronavirus testing sites keeping getting jammed up, test results get backlogged, and so some days are strangely light while others feature such depressing coronavirus test numbers it makes it seem like this virus is a plague that's going to wipe us all out. In a recent interview, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates agreed this is a huge problem, and not just because of the time delay in getting test results processed and turned around.

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Bill Gates thinks our coronavirus tests are a ‘complete waste’ right now originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 29 Jul 2020 at 15:34:57 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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