Ronald Klain, who led the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic under former President Barack Obama, said the lack of testing makes the coronavirus outbreak even worse.
Nicknamed the “Ebola Czar,” Klain told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace on Thursday that increased testing is the key to slowing down the spread of the virus as President Donald Trump pushes toward reopening the economy.
“As a matter of math, our progress towards the goal is not going to ever get there because we’re going backwards,” he said. “We’re going to test fewer people in America this week than we did last week.”
He said President Donald Trump’s decision to leave testing up to the states is going to create a problem because governors don’t have the power or ability to make manufacturers produce all the components of complicated test kits.
“We’re not on a path to solve this problem, we’re on a path to make this problem worse,” Klain said. “That’s because the president doesn’t want to take leadership of these tests, he said that the tests are up to the states.”
Klain urged Trump to use the Defense Production Act to increase testing efforts or see a “continued miasma on testing that is not going to get better.”
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