Health officials say they were not asked by Trump to slow down COVID-19 testing
our Trump administration officials testified that none have been asked by President Donald Trump to slow down testing for COVID-19. The question, posed during a House of Representatives committee hearing on Tuesday, following remarks made by Trump over the weekend at a rally in Tulsa, Okla. “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please,'” Trump said. Drs. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services; Food and Drug Commissioner Stephen Hahn; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield, all said they had not been asked by Trump to slow down testing. The U.S. has conducted about 27 million tests so far in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data aggregated by the Johns Hopkins University. That figure has been criticized by health experts, some of whom have called for 20 million tests a day.
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