House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took aim at President Trump, saying people were dying from the coronavirus while the United States was “still lagging” in its response.
“The president, his denial at the beginning, was deadly. His delaying of getting equipment to where it — continues his delaying in getting equipment to where it’s needed is deadly,” the California Democrat told CNN on Sunday, later adding, “This is such a tragedy. We don’t even know the magnitude of it because we don’t have adequate testing.
“As the president fiddles, people are dying,” Pelosi continued, arguing that Trump should not be opening up the country yet and that testing needs to be increased before that can happen.
Deborah Birx, one of the leaders helping Trump with the coronavirus response, said last week that the United States’s testing process has been “transformed,” and the country is now outpacing countries in its testing abilities.
“I just want to speak to the Americans for just a second,” Birx said during a town hall event. “We have to ensure that we still are testing. Even though probably by today, we will have done more tests than South Korea did in eight weeks, in the last eight days. In the last eight days, we’ve done more testing than South Korea.”
South Korea has been lauded for its rigorous testing program that has allowed it to help bend the curve of the coronavirus outbreak. So far, the U.S. has almost 125,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with over 2,000 people dead. Over 2,500 people have recovered in the country.
