To the editor:

The COVID-19 crisis includes many sub-tier crises. The sub-crisis with the greatest impact on our immediate future is the need to increase our test kit production and processing capacity.

It was recently reported that over 70% of all cases are transmitted by people who show no symptoms. There was also a report that 40,000 people who tested positive in Wuhan, China, had no symptoms at all. This means that the advice to stay away from sick people and to self-isolate if we are sick is completely inadequate to stop the exponential spread of the virus. The inadequacy of that advice is demonstrated by the explosive spread that we continue to experience.

Most of the transmission is by people who feel fine. This means that our only hope of stopping the spread is by wholesale testing of seemingly healthy people. “Mountain Lake Journal” has been reporting that the supply of test kits and the ability to process those test kits is so limited that only people who require hospitalization are presently being tested. We must increase our testing capacity, and we must do it incredibly fast.

The first people who need testing are those who continue to work at the essential jobs to provide necessities for the rest of us. The asymptomatic carriers among those people need to be identified and isolated to prevent the spread of the virus to their coworkers and to those who are served by their essential work. Next, we can start testing people who are presently in self-isolation and presently not working, so that they can start filling in for positive-tested essential workers and so that we can establish networks of negative-tested people to deliver groceries and medications to the rest of the untested people who are in self-isolation.

The World Health Organization has been saying for weeks that we must test, test, test in order to control this pandemic. Our government and our industry must make it high priority to vastly increase our test capacity and to distribute that test capacity to our health care providers.

Chris Seth Murphy

Bloomingdale