President Donald Trump on Monday announced a new blueprint for ramping up nationwide diagnostic coronavirus testing, which public health officials say is necessary to get the country “ready for very phased and safe reopening” amid the global pandemic.
The president’s new plan calls on states and local governments to develop their own testing plans with the federal government as a “supplier of last resort.”
“Things are moving along,” the president said after several days of calls with individual governors, reportedly to find out what they needed to be able to reopen their economies. “We want to get our country open and the testing is not going to be a problem at all,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden.
So far, 5.4 million tests have been conducted in the United States, according to Trump, who thanked the executives of several of the nation’s largest retailers and medical companies, who shared their plans to help the government testing effort.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said testing would be available at 100 stores by the end of May.
Rite Aid CEO Heyward Donigan said its stores are doing 1,500 tests per day and will seek to expand that capability.
Stephen Rusckowski, the CEO for Quest Diagnostics, said his company is testing 50,000 people per day and will perform 100,000 tests per day by the end of May. He added the turnaround time for hospitalized patients is less than 24 hours.
Walgreens President Richard Ashworth said his company would also be able to triple its present volume for testing.
“The testing itself is going really well,” Trump said, adding that testing in minority communities is being ramped up in light of the disproportionate number of infections being documented in people of color. “There’s tremendous energy in our country right now,” Trump said.
The president said the government expects to double the number of tests in the coming weeks and months, but he didn’t provide an actual timeline.
Meanwhile, Trump said, there were “no complaints” from governors, despite state officials and health workers continuing to report severe shortages.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also said last week that testing was still a critical concern and that many more would be needed to keep the virus from reemerging in a stronger second wave.
His urgency echoed that of CDC Director Robert Redfield, who also emphasized the importance of more testing and tracing the interactions of people who test positive for the virus, which would quickly get them isolated and head off a larger outbreak.
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” Redfield told The Washington Post in an interview. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean,” he said, adding: “We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time.”
U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, meanwhile, said he agreed with Trump that the government should “refrain from bailing out fiscally irresponsible cities and states” amid the outbreak.
After his testing announcement, Trump took reporters’ questions, and briefly addressed Thursday’s task force news briefing in which the president went off script and suggested injecting disinfectants into bodies as a potential treatment for coronavirus.
Trump’s statement, which he defended the next day as sarcasm, led to several warnings from federal agencies and the makers of Lysol and Clorox not to ingest household cleansers.
When asked Monday, Trump said he “can’t imagine why” poison control centers reported spikes in ingestion of disinfectants after his comments. The president quickly moved on to other clamoring reporters in the Rose Garden.
Reports say the White House communication team advised the president after Thursday to scale back his appearances at the briefings, which they see as becoming potentially harmful to his reelection chances.
There were no news briefings Saturday and Sunday. By Monday, however, Trump was back at the podium while his top health officials remained sidelined.
During the weekend, Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force coordinator, defended the president’s musings, suggesting he may have just received information before the news conference, and that “he was still digesting.”
“Well, I think it bothers me that this is still in the news cycle,” Birx said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “I think we’re missing the bigger pieces of what we need to be doing, as an American people, to continue to protect one another. ... These are the things that we should be talking about and focusing on.”
As the media uproar about the comments spilled into the weekend, Trump went on Twitter to defend what he said, adding that the briefings were now not worth his time and effort.
“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,” the president tweeted Saturday. “They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”
Reports emerged Sunday that Fauci and Birx, the foremost public health officials on the coronavirus task force, could be sidelined in the coming weeks following Thursday’s fiasco.
The White House confirmed to Axios that the two will stay on “but take a back seat to the forward-looking, ‘what’s next’ message.”
The president’s announcement on diagnostic testing came amid a new Washington Post report that said Trump received more than 12 classified briefings warning about the growing threat of coronavirus as early as January and through February.
The president also said “we are not happy with China” and added that the administration was conducting “serious investigations” into the origins of the virus.
When asked about the death rumors surrounding North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Trump said “I do have a pretty good idea, but I can’t talk about it now.”
Trump also said he is not considering changing the election date and called candidate Joe Biden’s prediction last week that he might delay the election “propaganda.”
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