'No excuses!' Donald Trump orders governors to get 'testing programs & apparatus perfected' after 'game-changing' machines he gave them prove virtually useless because they don’t have enough test cartridges

President Trump has now told governors it's their responsibility to get coronavirus testing 'perfected' after several states complained that kits provided by the White House were unusable.

'Governors, get your states testing programs & apparatus perfected,' Trump ordered in a tweet on Sunday evening. 'Be ready, big things are happening. No excuses! 

'The Federal Government is there to help. We are testing more than any country in the World. Also, gear up with Face Masks,' he continued.  

Trump's latest comments come days after the federal government purchased a fleet of rapid coronavirus testing machines - which are able to deliver results within 15 minutes instead of days - and began distributing them across the country last week. 

President Trump has told governors it's their responsibility to start testing residents for coronavirus, warning there's 'no excuses' for inaction despite several states warning the test kits provided are virtually useless

Trump unveiled the plan to distribute the Abbott Laboratories testing machines about two weeks ago - calling them a 'whole new ballgame' in the fight against the pandemic. Every state except for Alaska was given 15 machines, regardless of its population or severity of its outbreak.

However, excitement among Governors who had lauded the prospect of being able to run up to 3,000 tests per day quickly dissipated shortly after the machines arrived.

The frustrated parties said the machines are actually sitting idle because they weren't given enough supplies to use them, with many of the machines arriving with only 120 cartridges, enough for about 100 tests.

'There was a lot of talk about this device, a lot of hype on it nationally, and it's wonderful, and when they showed up, expectations were really high,' New Hampshire Gov Chris Sununu told a news conference on Wednesday.

'But to actually have 13 of these devices and have no way to use them - I'm banging my head against a wall. I really am. It's really frustrating.' 

The federal government has faced fierce criticism over nationwide testing shortages that have crippled the US response to coronavirus, a pandemic which has sickened more than 534,000 Americans and killed at least 21,692 as of Sunday evening. 

Public health officials including top members of the White House coronavirus task force have acknowledged the testing failures, while President Donald Trump has maintained that the system is the strongest in the world. 

The President has also repeatedly suggested that the U.S. is leading the world in testing rates, as he once again reiterated in his tweet Tuesday evening. 

To date, 2.8 million coronavirus tests have been carried out nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which amounts to less than one percent of the population - a lower per-capita testing rate than many other countries. 

So while it's technically true that the U.S. has physically tested more people than any other country, Trump's suggestion that the United States is leading the world in testing rates is wrong.    

As for Trump's insistence to 'gear up' with face masks, last week the administration told Congress that the federal government’s emergency stockpile was depleted and states wouldn’t be receiving more shipments of personal protective gear.

Trump first advocated for the use of non-medical face masks on Friday, but insisted he wouldn't be following the instruction, saying: 'I don’t think I’m going to be doing it...Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens—I just don’t see it.'

The President's latest orders come just a day after a New York Times report detailed numerous instances in which senior White House officials and other experts tried to urge Trump into proactive action against the coronavirus outbreak in January and February, but the cries fell of deaf ears.

According to the report, Dr. Carter Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, was once such expert who urged senior White House officials shut down schools nationwide some six weeks before President Trump finally took his first steps to address the danger the nation was facing. 

'You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools,' Mecher wrote to the nation’s public health bureaucracy, as reported by The Times. 'Now I’m screaming, close the colleges and universities.'

Despite the warning, and several similar alarms from top White House executives, Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus' and opted to focus his attention instead on 'controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials.'   

Asked about on-going testing shortages by the Wall Street Journal, US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) spokeswoman Mia Heck said that states are able to order more supplies through the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Heck explained that the federal government purchased limited quantities of Abbott machines for state labs because it wanted to allow enough for hospitals to buy them as well.

She did not respond to a question about why 49 states received the same number of tests and machines.

Illinois Gov J.B. Pritzker said he spoke to Abbott, which is based in his state, over a week ago and made an agreement to conduct 88,000 tests a month, or about 3,000 daily.

After the federal government took over purchasing and distribution of the tests, Illinois received far fewer than Pritzker had anticipated.

'That's eight tests per machine for all of Illinois,' the Democratic governor said.

In New York, the epicenter of the US outbreak, said their Abbott machines wouldn't be used until they acquire enough cartridges to make them practical. 

In Louisiana, which has the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the nation, Gov John Bel Edwards said he had hoped to deploy the Abbott machines statewide to help keep health-care workers on the job while preserving personal protective equipment.

'We have the machines, but not necessarily the cartridges to make a big difference,' Edwards said.