Dr. Anthony Fauci told House lawmakers on Tuesday that despite President Donald Trump’s claim that he had asked officials to “slow the testing down,” he had never been given such a directive. In fact, we will be doing more testing’: Fauci says he was never asked to slow coronavirus testing. The citizens were appalled and surprise with the remarks of the White House.
“To my knowledge, none of us have ever been told to slow down on testing. That just is a fact,” he said. Fauci said testing and contact surveillance were fundamental to “understand exactly what’s going on in community spread.”
Moreover, he confirmed that there is no direct orders on slowing down the contact tracing and testing, instead, they are doing their best effort to flatten the curve.
“So, it’s the opposite. We’re going to be doing more testing, not less.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious-disease expert at the National Institutes of Health appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The team is composed by Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention; Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; and Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health for Health and Human Services. The team worked hand in hand to combat the deadly coronavirus in the USA. However, their leadership was questioned by the constituents that sparked cold protests in other platforms to pressure the officials to do better.
With the other pressing issues around the country, the hearing comes amid continued scrutiny over Trump’s handling of the virus and nationwide protests over racism and police brutality, which sent hundreds of thousands marching into streets amid the pandemic. The recent injustices have brought menace in many states and the threat of coronavirus has not yet ended, leaving the medical practitioners not relaxed and relentless.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Administration received a new batch of criticism after holding a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last week – something that concerned some health experts – and for telling the crowd he asked for a slow down on testing.
“Here’s the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases,” Trump said. “So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.'”
Some of Trump’s advisers said the president intended the remark in jest. But when asked earlier Tuesday if he had been joking about a reduction in testing, Trump said, “I don’t kid.”
Without the concrete evidence or statement released by the White House, Fauci, Redfield, Hahn and Giroir each said they had never heard official instructions from the White House to slow down testing as allegedly been circulating in news and other media platforms.
Fauci said on his opening remarks that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the progress that has been made toward developing a vaccine for COVID-19, which he said will likely be the “nail in the coffin” needed to end the coronavirus pandemic.
Fauci said there were a number of promising vaccines in development and that it’s about “when and not if” they get positive results. He reiterated his hope that a vaccine could be made available by the end of 2020 or early 2021. Americans are hopeful with the announcement, since every country are pushing their best effort and innovation to discover the anticipated coronavirus vaccine.
Day by day, the number of cases still increases in some states and coronavirus has infected 2.3 million Americans and killed more than 120,000. The rising number of the cases from other states tells us that the battle is not yet over.
