Melinda Gates gives Trump administration a ‘D-minus’ for its coronavirus response
- The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said the US government lacks a coordinated response in its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic
- She said more money needs to be put toward testing and contact tracing, starting with health care workers and vulnerable populations
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Myah Ward on politico.com on May 7, 2020.
Gates – co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated billions of dollars to health research – gave the administration a “D-minus” grade for its handling of the outbreak, citing a lack of a coordinated, national response. She said governors were stepping up with “50 different home-grown state solutions”, instead of a national response coming from the top.
“You know, if we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing,” Gates said during a POLITICO Women Rule interview.
“We would be testing, first, health care workers and then the most vulnerable, and you’d be doing contact tracing. And we would be able to start thinking about slowly, slowly reopening places in society in safe and healthy ways, but we have a lack of a coordinated effort. That’s just the truth, across the United States,” she said.