Governor Newsom announces plans for massive expansion of testing statewide

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – There seems to be nothing more important to easing the stay at home order in California than making sure that millions of state residents are tested for COVID-19.

On Wednesday, Governor Gavin Newsom outlined plans for an aggressive expansion of testing throughout the state, essentially increasing the number of tests, five-fold, to tens of thousands of tests every day.

In March, two thousand tests were conducted on a daily basis, that number is currently at 14,500 a day.

By the end of April the Governor hopes testing will reach 25,000. His target is 60-80,000 tests statewide.

To achieve that goal, the Governor said he will add more testing sites, especially in communities of color. He said the state must also obtain more swabs, the material that’s used to collect the test samples.

As part of the push to expand testing, Newsom wants to do more contact tracing. He’s calling for a workforce of 10,000 people, many of them state employees, to serve as contact tracers. They would be responsible for identifying people who may have been exposed to an infected patient so that person can be isolated or possibly quarantined.