Celebrities are getting coronavirus tests faster than everyone else

• Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson were the first Hollywood celebrities to get coronavirus, along with two basketball players on the Utah Jazz basketball team.Hanks and Wilson, who had been in Australia since January, were tested quickly, in part due to their celebrity status and in part due to Australia's efficient coronavirus response.Tom Hanks got tested because he is in Australia. Ron Klain, the former Ebola czar in the Obama administration, said. "If Tom Hanks was in New York, it would be almost impossible for him to get tested."
• When news broke that Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson had become the first celebrities diagnosed with the coronavirus, it was a moment that struck fans — particularly in countries that have yet to feel the brunt of the virus — just how far and fast it is spreading. 
  But amid the praise for how Hanks and Wilson are handling the situation, many people have also called into question how quickly the couple were tested and diagnosed, while most of the general public in the US and many European countries struggle to even find out where to get a test.
  Some say it had a lot to do with the fact that they weren't in the US. "Tom Hanks got tested because he is in Australia," Ron Klain, the former Ebola czar of the Obama administration, told Rachel Maddow. "If Tom Hanks was in New York, it would be almost impossible for him to get tested."
  But, technically, Hanks and Wilson wouldn't have qualified for an expedited test in Australia, either. The official Australian criteria for testing is "if you develop a fever, a cough, sore throat or shortness of breath within 14 days of overseas travel, seek medical attention." Since Hanks and Wilson had been in Australia since January, they wouldn't have qualified.

  A significant proportion of tests in the US have been done on NBA players, while other Americans wait. French professional basketball player Rudy Gobert apologized for exposing others to the disease.It was a d

• It was a dramatic moment when medical officials raced onto the Chesapeake Energy Arena basketball court in Oklahoma City on Wednesday night to prematurely shut down the game the Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder teams were playing. They'd received a tip that Rudy Gobert, a basketball player for Utah Jazz, had tested positive for the new coronavirus.

• Up until that point, testing had been sluggish. On Tuesday, 2,728 people were tested across the US — just over 50 people for each state. On Wednesday night, 58 tests were performed on athletes and team staff.

• That day, the same day the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, new stats emerged showing the US had done a total of five tests for every one million people, compared to with almost 4,000 tests per million people in South Korea.
  "Other countries are testing much more broadly than we are," William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, previously told Business Insider. "We are trotting along while they're racing along."
  The only other people who were tested nearly as quickly appeared to be political officials, like Ted Cruz, Paul Gosar, and Matt Gaetz, who were exposed at conservative conference CPAC.
  According to Diana Zuckerman, the president of the National Center for Health Research in Washington, DC, it makes sense that high-profile celebrities and athletes have more access to COVID-19 testing than the general public.
• "I think there's a lot of benefit for a physician to have celebrity patients, and that means that those physicians are going to do their very best to please their patients in ways that they might not work quite so hard for in a non-celebrity patient," Zuckerman told Insider. "When something is available but limited, and there's limited access but it exists, people with more fame are and more money are more likely to get it."

  America is lagging behind every other country when it comes to coronavirus testing

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