Murren hopes to see 30K Nevadans tested per day for coronavirus

Like many other states, Nevada has faced a challenge in providing enough coronavirus tests. The state’s COVID-19 Response, Relief and Recovery Task Force is hoping it can change that.

Former MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren, head of the new public-private partnership, said the team has been working to “change the paradigm on how testing is conducted in Nevada” for the past few weeks.

By the end of this month, Murren hopes Nevada can test at least 30,000 people a day.

The Review-Journal spoke with Murren on Friday about the task force, which is focused on expanding personal protective equipment and testing in Nevada, as well as aiding the state’s eventual recovery from the crisis.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How has personal protective equipment (PPE) collection and testing gone so far?

Though we’ve largely caught up to what the state had in terms of its critical needs, we believe we should continue to stockpile PPE because we’re in an uncertain current environment and future.

But we have a nice rhythm to that, we have good purchasing channels, we have trusted partners, and we’ve become quite professional and proficient.

For the last few weeks, we have been working to break down those bottlenecks and change the paradigm on how testing is conducted in Nevada.

The solution has to be to dramatically expand the in-state testing capacity to develop high-throughput labs — labs that don’t just cast 100 or 200 people a day in terms of its capacity, but can test up to 10,000 people a day. By the end of this month, we want to be able to say that we can test at least 30,000 people a day in our state.

I view testing as an economic imperative. We’re not going to be able to sustainably recover as an economy until we have adequate testing capacity in this state, because that’ll help lead to improved consumer confidence and business confidence, which are both vital to an economic recovery.

When do you expect some sort of normalcy to return to Las Vegas, both for locals and travelers?

That’s a difficult question to answer. I think the key to any jurisdiction, specific to Nevada is having as much analytical data as we possibly can. And that comes back to the testing and contact tracing and community testing and retesting.

For my perspective, I’m viewing this crisis as best I can through both the health care lens as well as the economic lens. Too often with this discussion, it’s one or the other. I think we don’t have to choose. We shouldn’t have to choose.

Nevada has many disadvantages. But the advantages are, we’re a relatively small state. We have some very strong companies representing a vast portion of the economy of the state. They’re working collaboratively.

I think that we’re closer to coming out the other side in many jurisdictions, if we continue to be really disciplined and deliberate. And that over the next couple months, we’re going to see the monster bull growth in our economy.

Why did you decide to lead this task force?

My whole life at MGM was as the leader of the largest employer in the state, the largest taxpayer in the state. And we’ve always felt that we have a duty to do what we can in the state.

I was going to leave MGM anyway. It was going to happen at some point this year. And then we have the pandemic, which created a whole different set of circumstances for the company, for the industry, for the state and for me. And I felt that it would be a really appropriate time to accelerate my departure and help in this way.

I feel really blessed that I was able to do this and put together the people that we have.

What was starting up this team like?

It’s been incredibly complicated, but largely very rewarding. I would put this through the lens of creating a startup in minutes, not days or weeks.

Working with the governor, we assembled the group of men and women that are on the task force. And it’s always been my philosophy that big or small companies or nonprofits, the organization is only as good as the leadership of the organization.

For the first three weeks we met every day at noon, seven days a week. Now that we’ve gotten into a really good cadence and rhythm and some structure, we meet Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon, every week.

Have you ever seen anything like this before, with so many competitors working together?

No, I haven’t.

As somebody that’s been in the gaming industry for a couple decades, I know how we’d like to beat the stuffing out of each other day to day.

But I can tell you that I’ve never had more rewarding conversations with anyone in the state, whether it’s competitors of my former company, or other industries, or the institutional bias that has existed between the North and the South, or the partisan divides through play everywhere. This has been the most gratifying level of cooperation I’ve ever seen.

The list of donors is very broad. I mean, I think we’re going to raise a lot more than the $12 million now that we raised. I’ve never seen in my lifetime in Nevada, an environment where the industries, geographies into party rivalries have all been put aside.

How did heading MGM prepare you for your new role leading this task force?

It’s a big transition to go from a large organization of men and women that, in many cases, I literally grew up with professionally.

But one of the aspects I think I bring to this role is I’ve always had a collaborative nature.

One thing I learned very, very vividly during post-9/11, during the Great Recession, after 1 October is that relationships really matter. So, a lot of what we have done, we’ve been able to draw upon global relationships in Europe and in the Middle East, in China, Japan, Canada. Being able to get somebody on the phone, to be able to talk through an issue.

Nevada and Las Vegas have helped a lot of communities around the country and the world. The company I worked for, and my family, have helped a lot of people around the world. And when I asked for help, I hope to get it. In many cases we have, whether it’s donations of PPE or supply chain opportunities or funds. We’ve raised a lot of money; we’ve opened up supply chains globally. And I attributed that to a couple of decades’ worth of relationships.

Contact Bailey Schulz at bschulz@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0233. Follow @bailey_schulz on Twitter.