Global health expert: Trump's 'inadequate testing' is why we're shut down

The Trump administration’s failure to adequately test enough Americans for coronavirus is the reason the economy is still shutdown, Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN on Monday night.

On March 10, Vice President Mike Pence promised “more than 4 million more tests” would be available across the country by the end of that week. However, it was more than a month later — April 20 — before 4 million tests had actually been conducted.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly praised himself for his response to the virus, tweeting as recently as Tuesday that, under his leadership, the United States was “doing far more, and better, Testing than any other country in the world.”

From a CNN interview on Monday, April 17:

DR. ASHISH JHA: We’ve been woefully behind this entire time. And I think what most Americans need to know is the reason we are shut down — our economy is shut down — is because we’ve had inadequate testing.

 

And we’ve been stalled at 150,000 [tests] a day. 200,000 is not a skyrocket, it’s an improvement. We believe we need to be at at least 500,000 tests a day. And most people criticize us for being too low. Other people think it’s a lot more than that.

 

So it’s mild progress in the context of when you’re starting off really far behind.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.