Coronavirus: Irate US lawmakers assail system over failure to meet demand for test kits
- System ‘not really geared to what we need’, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says
- ‘Idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that,’ he says
US health officials said on Thursday that the country’s public health system is not currently able to offer Covid-19 tests on demand, fuelling anger in both parties about weaknesses in the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Asked in a House Oversight Committee meeting who at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is responsible for ensuring that those asking for a Covid-19 test can get one, Robert Redfield, the agency’s director, declined to answer and deferred to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now, to what you are asking for,” Fauci said in response to the question from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democratic representative from Florida. “It is a failing. Let’s admit it.
“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 said. “The idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes. But we are not.”
The exchange captured the rising frustration in Washington over the pace at which Covid-19 testing kits are becoming available to health workers and the general public, amid expectations that the number of cases in the US is far higher than official numbers suggest.