President Trump said Thursday he disagreed with Anthony Fauci’s statement that the U.S. does not yet have the testing capacity that it needs to effectively contain the spread of the novel coronavirus as stay-at-home restrictions are relaxed.
“No, I don’t agree with him on that. I think we are doing a great job on testing,” Trump told reporters at a White House briefing Thursday evening when asked about Fauci’s recent remarks in a Time magazine interview.
“If he said that, I don’t agree with him,” Trump continued.
The president described the U.S. as more advanced than other nations on testing, claiming that other countries have inquired about American capabilities.
“We’re doing very well on testing. We’ve tested far more than anyone else in the world and within a short period of time you’ll be hearing about new tests that are coming out that are going to be incredible,” Trump said.
The Trump administration has come under growing pressure to do more to assist states in ramping up testing nationwide as governors draft plans to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders so that businesses can reopen.
Fauci, a top U.S. infectious disease expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force, told Time in an interview published earlier Thursday that the U.S. needs to “significantly ramp up” testing in order to contain future outbreaks.
“We need to significantly ramp up not only the number of tests, but the capacity to perform them, so that you don’t have a situation where you have a test but it can’t be done because there isn’t a swab, or because there isn’t extraction media, or not the right vial,” Fauci said.
“I am not overly confident right now at all that we have what it takes to do that. We are doing better, and I think we are going to get there, but we are not there yet,” he added.
Fauci, who was not present at Thursday’s briefing, has at times contradicted Trump in his public remarks, drawing criticism from some conservative circles. The president earlier this month retweeted a tweet from an account that included the hashtag #FireFauci, stirring speculation he could be ousted.
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Fauci told Time in the latest interview that he didn’t think the country needed to be able to test everyone but said there were still “gaps” in the ability to do enough tests to successfully contain the virus.
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Trump says he disagrees with Fauci comments that U.S. needs more coronavirus testing https://t.co/371dA2oj89 pic.twitter.com/FPvsYzOKGU
— The Hill (@thehill) April 24, 2020
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