Politico’s health newsletter, which yesterday highlighted an unflattering review of Arkansas’s coronavirus response in the outbreak in Northwest Arkansas, drops another unhappy note in today’s edition.

It’s part of a roundup of how various states are suffering because of a lack of help from the Trump administration. (Oh, but surely that letter from Arkansas congressmen beseeching help from Mike Pence will soon fix that.) The problems for states come in contact tracing (far below demand in Arkansas and likely to remain so even when several hundred more people are at work) and in testing (a problem acknowledged in Arkansas and traced to lack of supplies, overwhelming demand and the galloping virus).

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The consequences go beyond the “hoax” virus.

— In Arkansas, shortages of the chemicals needed to process Covid-19 tests have become so severe that the state is weighing whether to abandon its requirement that people needing elective surgeries first get tested.

A question for the daily briefing today, perhaps.

 

 

 

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