On the eve of the first 2020 presidential election debate where healthcare and COVID-19 are expected to be hotly argued topics, President Donald Trump unveiled a plan to send up to 100 million rapid diagnostic tests to states over the coming months.

The lack of widespread, easily accessible and accurate COVID-19 tests and Trump's repeated claims that the U.S. would have fewer cases of the disease if it slowed down the diagnostics process are expected to be key issues raised at the Sept. 29 debate by Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden.

About 205,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 7.1 million people in the U.S. have been infected with the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

The U.S. is averaging over 40,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day.

U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield warned lawmakers on Capitol Hill about expected surges of COVID-19 over the winter months and the overlap with the nation's annual influenza season.

Trump has been pressuring states to fully reopen their economies and schools in particular.

Late last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and one of Trump's close allies, lifted all restrictions on bars and restaurants in his state and said cities could not impose orders to wear masks.

Officials said the administration purchased 150 million Abbott Laboratories BinaxNOW Ag Card rapid tests on Aug. 27 and will ship up to 100 million of those products to U.S. states and territories to help drive the Trump administration's push to reopen local economies and schools.

The rapid tests received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 26.

Results in 15 minutes

The $5 tests can produce COVID-19 test results in 15 minutes, Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said at a Sept. 28 briefing.

However, Giroir acknowledged that antigen tests like Abbott's BinaxNOW may not be as sensitive as laboratory-based nucleic acid tests, and results may need to be confirmed with a molecular test before making treatment decisions.

It is unclear why the administration waited a month before launching the program to ship the tests. Officials said only 6.5 million of the Abbott tests would be dispersed in the first week, with the remainder being sent over the coming weeks. But the move comes just weeks before the Nov. 3 U.S. election and a day before Trump's debate with Biden.

Neither Trump nor other officials at the Sept. 28 briefing said how the administration had paid for the tests and which agency's budget covered the $760 million contract with Abbott.

HHS and the White House did not immediately respond to questions about the costs to U.S. taxpayers and why the agency waited a month to launch the program.

But the 100 million tests being shipped to states over the coming weeks and months fall short of what is needed, tweeted Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard University. Instead of spending only $760 million on the tests, the administration should be spending $20 billion and using the Defense Production Act to produce the tests in much greater quantities — as many as 20 times what has been purchased.

"There's no reason the [White House] and Congress are not being more proactive with testing and scale up of these tests," Mina wrote on Twitter.

Mina also disputed Vice President Mike Pence's claim that the U.S. has the capacity to conduct 3 million tests per day.

"Not even close," he said.