One of the most important weapons for fighting the novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. is also one of the most glaring gaps in the country’s health system: a lack of rapid, widespread testing for COVID-19.

Increasingly desperate pleas from health care workers and public authorities for donations of face masks and other protective gear are an unsettling sign of just how unprepared American hospitals are for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across California, dozens more health care workers have been ordered home because of possible contagion in response to more than 80 confirmed cases as of Sunday afternoon. In Kirkland, Washington, more than a quarter of the city’s fire department was quarantined after exposure to a handful of infected patients at the Life Care Center nursing home.

School districts across the U.S., particularly those with large Asian American populations, have scrambled to respond to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened tens of thousands more, almost all in China.