Dr. Deborah Birx said that recent demonstrations have destroyed a “significant” number of coronavirus testing sites.
On Monday, Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, told governors on a phone call that protests that erupted into violence following the death of George Floyd led to the destruction of 70 COVID-19 testing sites, making those in inner-city areas more susceptible to having undocumented infections.
“We got a significant number of our testing sites that were serving inner-city groups destroyed at the beginning of the protests. So, there were a lot of pharmacies, and we can see the testing rates in some of the urban areas starting to decline,” Birx said in a phone call first obtained by the Daily Beast. “And we did lose a significant — I think 70 testing sites that were in urban areas. So, all of the governors are going to have to scramble to make sure there is testing available in those urban areas,” Birx said.
In a phone call days earlier, Birx said the largely peaceful protests across the country could cause increased COVID-19 cases in large metro areas. She added Monday that the large number of people protesting could expose higher-risk patient groups to the coronavirus.
According to Birx, all states significantly increased their testing capacity so the curve of coronavirus cases could be properly monitored, and at the same time, three states — California, Arizona, and North Carolina — saw their numbers of COVID-19 cases surge. “That makes us quite concerned,” Birx said.
There are more than 7.2 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus globally, with nearly 412,000 deaths and 3.4 million reported recoveries.
In the United States, more than 1.9 million people have tested positive for the coronavirus, with the nation’s death toll totaling more than 112,000. More than 21 million people in the U.S. have been tested for COVID-19, according to the latest reading of the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
