The White House has revealed how it plans to distribute $11 billion from the CARES ACT to support state testing, Politico reported.
The money will be distributed based on a formula that considers the prevalence of the coronavirus in states and their overall populations, the White House said May 11.
The five states with the highest numbers of coronavirus cases as of May 11 are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois and California, according to the CDC's COVID data tracker.
Officials also said they want states to be able to test at least 2 percent of their populations in May, which would be about 12.9 million tests. To help, the government is giving states 12.9 million swabs and about 10 million tubes of chemicals needed to transport test samples, according to Politico.
States have been asked to give updates on their testing strategies and report specific statistics to the federal government within the next few weeks.
The current number of COVID-19 tests being conducted each week is still well below what public health officials have said is necessary to safely reopen the country, Politico reported.
But White House officials said that as of May 11, 31 states have a positivity rate of less than 10 percent, meaning less than 10 percent of people tested have positive results. Some public health officials have said that testing would be sufficient if 10 percent of tests or fewer come back positive.