A top infectious disease expert in the Trump administration told Congress on Thursday the U.S. healthcare system is failing to test any person who needs it quickly as the COVID-19 virus spreads across the country.
Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leader on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday the United States is not as well prepared for mass testing as other countries.
“The system does not — is not really geared to what we need right now — what you are asking for. That is a failing. It is a failing. Let’s admit it,” Fauci told lawmakers.
He was responded to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who grilled another panelist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, about who specifically was in charge of ensuring any person who needed a test could get one.
“The fact is, the way the system was set up is that the public health component that Dr. Redfield was talking about was a system where you put it out there in the public, and a physician asks for it, and you get it,” Fauci testified. “The idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it — we’re not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes. But we’re not.”
The Atlantic’s rolling tracker estimates there have been 9,000 coronavirus tests conducted in the U.S. thus far. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website says there are 1,215 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. resulting in 36 deaths, although the interactive map run by Johns Hopkins University states that there are 1,323 cases in the U.S. with at least 38 confirmed deaths so far.
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South Korea tested more than 220,000 people, and Italy has conducted more than 73,000 tests. The World Health Organization says that South Korea has confirmed 7,983 cases with at least 66 deaths, and Italy has confirmed 12,462 cases and 827 deaths.
Wassermann Schultz tried pushing Redfield for answers on testing for healthcare workers, pointing to a March letter from a nurse who said she was denied coronavirus testing by the CDC.
“The public county officer called me and verified my symptoms and agreed with testing. But the National CDC would not initiate testing,” the nurse said, adding, “Delaying this test puts the whole community at risk.”
Redfield testified in a different hearing on Wednesday that “this is a misunderstanding if it did occur.”
On Thursday, Wassermann Schultz shared a letter from the National Nurses United union, which claimed that “there have been far too many cases where exposed healthcare workers have been refused testing for this to be a ‘misunderstanding.'”
“We need to have someone in charge of making sure that as many people as possible across this country have access to getting tested as soon as possible,” Wassermann Schultz said. “Can you give us the name of the person who can guarantee that anyone — but especially healthcare workers — that needs to be tested can be?”
Redfield replied, “I was trying to say that the responsibility that I have at CDC is to make sure that all the public health labs have it, and they can make the judgment on how they want to use it.”
He turned to Fauci for assistance as Wassermann Schultz kept pressing him for a name, and Fauci conceded the U.S. wasn’t up to the task.
Hospitals and labs in the U.S. have been ramping up their testing capacity over the past few days. The Cleveland Clinic announced Wednesday it would soon have new on-site testing abilities with results produced within eight hours instead of the two-to-seven day time frame typically taken by outside labs.
The American Enterprise Institute’s COVID-19 Test Capacity tracker estimates the U.S. has a current testing capacity of 20,695 tests per day, an increase from the 7,840 estimated daily testing capacity earlier this week.
The WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a “pandemic” on Wednesday.
The coronavirus is believed to have originated in the city of Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province. Both China and Russia have been spreading disinformation about it.
Public events across the U.S. have been canceled in response to the spread of the virus, dozens of schools have been closed, and the U.S. Capitol complex was closed to the general public on Thursday. The stock market plunged this week amid concerns about the coronavirus’s effect on the global economy.
