SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Mitt Romney harshly criticized the Trump administration Tuesday for being slow to ramp up testing in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States.
The Utah Republican admonished Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant Health and Human Services secretary, for celebrating that the U.S. has conducted more tests and more tests per capita than South Korea.
“But you ignored the fact that they accomplished theirs at the beginning of the outbreak, while we treaded water during February and March,” Romney said. “I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever.”
Romney questioned Trump administration health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a central figure in the government’s response to COVID-19, during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing Tuesday.
At a White House press briefing Monday, where President Donald Trump proclaimed the U.S. has “prevailed on testing,” Girior said, “No matter how you look at it, America is leading the world on testing.”
“I understand that politicians are going to frame data that is most positive politically, but of course, I don’t expect that from admirals,” said Romney, who appeared at the hearing via videoconference.
By March the U.S. had completed just 2,000 tests while South Korea had conducted more than 140,000 tests, “so partially as a result of that they have 256 deaths while we have almost 80,000 deaths,” he said.
“The fact is their test numbers are going down, down, down now because they don’t have the kind of outbreak we have,” Romney said. “Ours are going up, up, up as they have to.”
To date, the U.S. has done 9 million tests, Giroir said. He projected the country would be able to administer 40 million to 50 million tests per month by September if needed.
While Romney has been and continues to be critical about the lack of testing, he said the U.S. has done a “pretty darn good” job on aggressively working to develop a vaccine.
“And yet the president said the other day that President Obama is responsible for our lack of a vaccine,” Romney said, prefacing a question to Fauci about whether Obama or Trump is responsible for the country not having a vaccine or delaying one.
Fauci, who appeared by videoconference from his home, said neither the former nor the current president is responsible for the lack of a vaccine. He said researchers moved rapidly and no one has ever gone from knowing what the virus is to a phase one vaccine trial as fast.
“I was surprised by the comment, but that was my impression,” Romney said, referring to Trump blaming the Obama administration for the U.S. not being prepared to handle the pandemic.
Romney also pressed Fauci on how likely it is to have a vaccine in a year or two, asking whether it’s more likely than not or just a long shot.
“Although there is no guarantee, I think it is clearly much more likely than not that somewhere within that time frame we will get a vaccine for this virus,” Fauci said.
But Fauci also noted during his testimony that expecting a vaccine to be available as schools and universities look to open this fall is a “bit of a bridge too far.” He also cautioned that trial vaccines could actually worsen the virus.
Fauci also testified that he’s concerned about states, cities or regions that skip over checkpoints in the White House plan for opening the country, which includes recommendations to show a “downward trajectory of positive tests” or a “downward trajectory of documented cases” of COVID-19 for two weeks. He said that could trigger an outbreak that states might not be able to control.
“Which, in fact, paradoxically will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery. It would almost turn the clock back rather than going forward. That is my major concern,” Fauci said.
As the U.S. and other countries race to develop a vaccine, Trump last week reverted back to his assertion that the virus would disappear on its own.
“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests: This is going to go away without a vaccine,” the president said. “It’s going to go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”
In the hearing, Romney expressed dismay about the lack of real-time COVID-19 data on things like demographics, hospitalization and treatment at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“How is it possible in this day and age that the CDC has never established such a real-time system with accurate data, and what can Congress do to rectify that so we never have to look at something like this again?” the senator asked.
CDC Director Robert Redfield conceded the system is archaic and not integrated with public health departments around the country. He said the U.S. needs a modern data analytics system capable of predictive analysis.
“I think it’s one of the shortcomings that have been identified as we went through this outbreak and I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s time to get that corrected,” Redfield said.
In a tweet, Romney said comprehensive, current data on COVID-19 infection rates, disease spread, demographics and testing is needed to better equip the country to reopen and handle future pandemics.