[Goose]

Promising 10M free tests might be as great as promising free lunches, but is this by 2023 or what?Sounds like they're still not able to handle their current load:  "Public Health Department Director Barbara Ferrer announced 1,541 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, nearly 1,000 more than what was reported the previous day. The large increase is mostly the result of a boost in testing as well as a lag in weekend reporting,"

I really have no idea what the testing capacity available in Los Angeles county.  The delay through the system does not reflect necessarily on capacity. The "large" testing machines run batches of a thousand or so. Preparing the samples takes the most time. However, they don't want to run them half full so probably they queue up samples and do one run a day. If they had enough samples doing three runs a day would be easily possible. I have previously pointed out that University of Washington advertises a capacity of 3000 tests per day but has (at that date) never run anything close to capacity. So, what is the truth? Are they capacity limited or demand limited?

As of about a week ago (most recent full numbers), LA County has been testing up to about 5,000 per day.  At that rate, it will take 2000 days (5.5 years) to get through everyone once.  At their current COVID-19 death rate of 47 a day (over past week), .... well, you can do the math.

True. Offering more tests, in fact a lot more tests, seem to imply they think they can do well more than 5000 a day and just haven't been ask to do so.

[Goose]

Promising 10M free tests might be as great as promising free lunches, but is this by 2023 or what?Sounds like they're still not able to handle their current load:  "Public Health Department Director Barbara Ferrer announced 1,541 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, nearly 1,000 more than what was reported the previous day. The large increase is mostly the result of a boost in testing as well as a lag in weekend reporting,"

I really have no idea what the testing capacity available in Los Angeles county.  The delay through the system does not reflect necessarily on capacity. The "large" testing machines run batches of a thousand or so. Preparing the samples takes the most time. However, they don't want to run them half full so probably they queue up samples and do one run a day. If they had enough samples doing three runs a day would be easily possible. I have previously pointed out that University of Washington advertises a capacity of 3000 tests per day but has (at that date) never run anything close to capacity. So, what is the truth? Are they capacity limited or demand limited?

As of about a week ago (most recent full numbers), LA County has been testing up to about 5,000 per day.  At that rate, it will take 2000 days (5.5 years) to get through everyone once.  At their current COVID-19 death rate of 47 a day (over past week), .... well, you can do the math.

True. Offering more tests, in fact a lot more tests, seem to imply they think they can do well more than 5000 a day and just haven't been ask to do so.