Editorial: We need many more tests to 'crush the curve'

That winter cough that wouldn't quit. Did you have COVID-19?

That co-worker who went home sick last month. Did she have it?

Your roommate with fever, aches, fatigue and chest tightness. Does he have it?

You might never know who's had COVID-19, or who's got it now, unless symptoms landed the person in the hospital.

That's because a scarcity of tests for the disease plagues the nation and Illinois, where Gov. J.B. Pritzker last week bemoaned falling 4,000 tests a day short of his 10,000-a-day goal. He blamed President Donald Trump for the lapse in testing capacity.

Whatever the cause of the holdup, if we want to move beyond the current state of affairs - everyone quarantined and acting as if everyone else has got COVID-19 - we need a huge ramp-up in testing. That's the view of experts like Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, whose long list of credentials includes former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and former president of the National Academy of Medicine. His "Crush the Curve" editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine includes a strategy involving millions of tests, plus infirmaries or housing to isolate those who test positive so family members and housemates can be spared and the chain of transmission can be broken.

Some locales have taken steps. Cook County officials on Wednesday announced 400 hotel rooms are available for patients who no longer require hospitalization but have no place to adequately stay isolated from others while they continue to recover.

But it all comes down to testing to understand who is contagious, including those who have no symptoms, and who is recovered and might carry some immunity.

Consider Iceland. Its testing of 10% of its population, a higher level than any other country, led to the sobering revelation that half those who had COVID-19 didn't know it.

In Illinois, Pritzker said new machines to process tests weren't performing up to expectations and private labs were taking a week or more to provide results as he sought to increase testing capabilities of state labs and local hospitals.

Such steps might at least help people who are sick put a name to their illness. Knowing a patient is coronavirus-positive might protect their families and the health care workers tasked with providing care.

But it's not nearly enough to get us out of our houses and get the economy back on track. For that, we need many, many more tests and we need a coordinated plan that includes them.

Who's sick? Who might they have infected? Who's immune?

Knowing that, in real time, is the key to squelching the outbreak, reducing the risk of subsequent waves of disease and calming this coronavirus storm that's roiling the world.