Colorado Gov. Polis says national coronavirus testing is 'a complete disgrace'

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis during an interview on Sunday's episode of "Meet the Press" said that "the national testing scene is a complete disgrace."

The Democrat governor criticized the length of time that it takes to receive coronavirus test results.

"So every test we send out to private lab partners nationally, Quest, LabCorp, seven days, eight days, nine days, maybe six days if we're lucky, almost useless from an epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective," he said.

He said the state lab is able to process test results more swiftly.

"Fortunately our state lab has done yeoman's work," Polis said. "We're running three shifts a day there, 24 hours a day. So while some are still sent out of state—and unfortunately that takes a long time and we can't count on it and our county needs to get testing right—we're trying to build that capacity in Colorado to process tests at that one to to day turnaround and we already are able to do 2,000 or 3,000 a day that way and even more with our private partners in state like UC Health."

The governor's criticism comes as the number of coronavirus cases has surged in areas across the country. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 3.7 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S., and more than 140,000 deaths.