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| Patrick Semansky/AP Photo |
President Donald Trump announced Sunday during a Coronavirus Task Force briefing that he will use the Defense Production Act to drive a company to produce an additional 20 million coronavirus testing swabs every month.
President Trump said the swabs are “easy” to obtain, comparing to the ventilators needed earlier. He brought the swabs to the briefing as a prop, comparing it to a Q-Tip.
This comes after governors on both sides of the aisle expressed they didn’t have enough testing that they needed to reopen their states.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said, “But the crisis that we're confronting is unique. And that's precisely why it would really be incredibly helpful if the federal government would use the Defense Production Act to start making these swabs and reagents, so we can improve testing.”
Additionally, Trump said the swabs were previously sent to the states but said some of them “don’t know where they are.”
"We have them coming by the tens of millions. We have them coming at a level that you'll have so many swabs you won't know what to do with them," Trump said.