Home International CDC ‘let the country down’ on coronavirus testing: White House

CDC ‘let the country down’ on coronavirus testing: White House

1170
0

WASHINGTON: The White House rebuked the top US health agency on Sunday (May 17), saying "it let the country down" on providing testing crucial to the battle against the coronavirus outbreak.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been under intense scrutiny since producing a faulty test for COVID-19 that caused weeks of delays in the US response.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Critics have pointed out that it could simply have accepted kits made by the World Health Organization, which has been producing them since late January, instead of insisting on developing its own test.

"Early on in this crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space, really let the country down with the testing," White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Because not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test. And that did set us back."

READ: CDC chief warns second COVID-19 wave may be worse

Advertisement

Advertisement

The Food and Drug Administration has also criticised the CDC for not following its own protocols in manufacturing COVID-19 tests. The errors were not corrected until late February.

Trump often blames the administration of his predecessor, Barack Obama, for passing on "broken tests" for the new coronavirus – although Obama left office years before the virus came into existence.

But Navarro's comments mark the strongest criticism by a named White House official of the CDC's role in the administration's slow rollout of testing.

'BACKBONE'

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar defended the CDC against Navarro's criticism, telling CBS it was never meant to be "the backbone of testing, of broad, mass testing, in the United States."

"I don't believe the CDC let this country down. I believe the CDC serves an important public health role. And what was always critical was to get the private sector to the table," he said on "Face the Nation."

An editorial in the respected medical journal The Lancet also came to the agency's defence.

"There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic … But punishing the agency by marginalizing and hobbling it is not the solution," it said.

"A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international."

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday reported 1,467,065 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 31,967 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,394 to 88,709.

On Mar 6, Trump said as he toured the CDC headquarters in Atlanta that four million "beautiful" testing kits would be available within a week and that "anybody that needs a test gets a test."

More than two months later, just 12 million Americans have been tested – less than four per cent of the population.

That places it 39th in the world behind other hard-hit countries like Russia, Italy and Spain, according to trusted online statistics source Worldometer.

Experts say widespread testing – of healthy people as well as those with syRead More – Source

[contf] [contfnew]

channel news asia

[contfnewc] [contfnewc]

Previous articleCommentary: Elon Musk, Teslas mad genius, is defying US lockdown – and people love it
Next articleCOVID-19: German football returns as Spain, UK death rates fall