COVID-19 Reports
Biden’s ‘Travesty’ Comment About Trump’s COVID Response Resurfaces Amid Testing Shortages
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Biden’s ‘travesty’ comment about Trump’s COVID response resurfaces amid testing shortages
EKO HOT BLOG reports that while his own government is facing backlash over test shortages, President Biden’s harsh criticism of his predecessor’s effort to make COVID-19 tests available has reappeared.
In December 2020, then-President-elect Biden attempted to hold Trump accountable for his COVID-19 reaction, highlighting the paucity of testing options for Americans. According to the Washington Post, Biden called the absence of testing a “travesty” that it was still an issue.
The Biden administration has taken a political hit from critics who claim the administration failed to anticipate a fresh wave of diseases and placed too much emphasis on immunizations. Late last month, Biden informed governors that the effort was insufficient.
“We have to do more,” he said. “We have to do better, and we will.”
Biden said it was not a failure but said the new cases led to an alarm bell going off.
Biden also added that “all of a sudden, it was like everybody rushed to the counter. There was a big, big rush, and I knew that was coming. So what I tried to do was meet with the companies and use the Defense Production Act to get a half a billion more tests and figure out how to get them to their homes, get them on the shelves in the stores. That’s what it’s all about.”
The Biden administration announced a plan to purchase 500 million at-home rapid tests for COVID-19 and distribute them for free, but health experts said the number is far below what is needed to address the omicron surge.
Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School Public Health, said the administration’s failure to roll out kits before the Christmas and New Year’s holidays was an “opportunity lost.”
Across the U.S., new COVID-19 cases have tripled in the past two weeks to over 400,000 a day, the highest level on record, amid a rush by many Americans to get tested. Americans have been searching drugstores for scarce home tests or waiting hours in chilly temperatures at testing facilities across the country.
Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the Brown University of Public Health dean, told CNN that he could not believe that “this is where we are almost two years into the pandemic.”
“Everybody saw it coming. We knew we needed more tests. I think the administration dropped the ball on this,” he said.
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