Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House's Wuhan coronavirus task force, explained to radio host Hugh Hewitt how the lacking of testing for COVID-19 in the United States is not anyone's fault.
Hewitt asked on Tuesday Fauci what was the root cause for a lack of testing kits and the slow progress being made to make the kits for the virus.
"You know, it was a complicated series of multiple things that conflated that just, you know, went the wrong way. One of them was a technical glitch that slowed things down in the beginning. Nobody’s fault. There wasn’t any bad guys there, it just happens," Fauci said.
"And then when we realized, when the CDC realized, and the FDA, that both the system itself as it was set up, which serves certain circumstances very well, was not well-suited to the kind of broad testing that we needed the private sector to get involved in," he continued. "The regulatory constraints, which under certain circumstances are helpful and protective of the American people, were not suited to the emergence of this particular outbreak. So there was a confluence of a bunch of things. I believe now that the CDC and the FDA’s department, that we’ve got it right now because we’re handing much of it over to the private sector, the heavy hitter companies that do this for a living. And I think what you’re going to be seeing looking forward is a major, major improvement in the availability of testing."
"Was the glitch or anything about the production of the test President Trump’s fault? Or actually, let me put it more broadly: Would every president have run into the same problem?" Hewitt followed up.
Oh, absolutely. This has nothing to do with anybody’s fault, certainly not the President’s fault," Fauci said.
The shortage of test kits for COVID-19 has lead to strict requirements for being able to be tested for the new disease. The test kits have been used as a political weapon by Democrats against Trump's administration.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, along with many others on social media, have falsely claimed the United States refused to get testing kits from the World Health Organization early on in the outbreak, which the WHO has refuted.
"No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States,” said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris. "This is consistent with experience since the United States does not ordinarily rely on WHO for reagents or diagnostic tests because of sufficient domestic capacity."
Join the conversation as a VIP Member