The first shipments, totaling 6.5 million tests, will be sent this week, and the amount each state receives will be based on population data. Although governors will be in charge of deciding how to use the rapid tests they receive, Trump and HHS testing czar Brett Giroir encouraged state leaders to deploy the tests to help reopen schools.

HHS already has sent a few million of the Abbott antigen tests to nursing homes and assisted living facilities, historically black colleges and universities, and areas damaged recently by wildfires and hurricanes.

Background: More than 7.1 million people in the U.S. have been infected with the coronavirus and more than 204,000 have died, according to data curated by Johns Hopkins University. The country is still tallying more than 40,000 new daily cases, and hospitalizations rose in the past week driven in part by spikes in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, according