Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for Health and Human Services and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, on Wednesday warned against buying any kind of tests being offered on the internet whose sellers claim can test for coronavirus antibodies.
"The antibody test would be able to tell you, have you been infected in the past," said Giroir on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Most of them, almost all of them, have not been through FDA authorization. And we are very concerned that many of the tests are really just not accurate."
The National Institutes of Health are trying to validate all tests available, said Giroir, and once that is done, the public can learn which tests work and which don't.
"A couple days ago, the United Kingdom bought almost 20 million tests and they just don't work at all," he pointed out.
Giroir also commented on an inspector general report that shows hospitals are saying they do not have enough protective equipment.
"If the masks are sitting in a warehouse down the street, and they have been delivered by the federal government but haven't gotten to your hospital, that is a concern," he said. "That's why we have even moved to the next step here at FEMA and HHS by supplying hospitals specifically, going door to door. If that hospital has a need and they are not getting that met, we really do that so that's really the posture we are in right now."
Giroir also noted that physical distancing and other precations "really do work," and urged Americans to continue their efforts.
"The estimate of deaths going down is the result of the fact that we have listened to the president and vice president and task force," said Giroir. "If we did nothing the deaths could have been 2 million, 3 million people in the United States."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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