“I said to my people, ‘Slow down the testing, please,'” added the president.
Administration officials have said the test slowdown has not been requested and that their comments were made “jokingly,” but Trump maintains he was not joking.
A Health and Human Services spokesperson confirmed to CNN that the 13 community-based testing sites, seven of which are in Texas, would no longer receive direct funding.
“As we get closer to the agreed transition date of June 30 for state-run sites, the federal government is expanding its support for community testing to a more sustainable model,” the spokesperson said, adding that the transition It will include “continued support from retail and pharmacy associations in more than 600 locations” and “offering COVID-19 testing at more than 1,300 federally rated health centers nationwide.”
But several Texas lawmakers, including Republicans Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, say they don’t understand why federal aid is being withdrawn as their state sees more and more cases of coronavirus.
“Frankly, I didn’t understand what they were thinking,” Cornyn told CNN on Thursday.
In a joint letter sent Thursday to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor, Cornyn and Cruz urged the administration to “grant an extension to the program for test sites in Texas,” which they said are “critical to Texas Proof Ability”.
“Texas is experiencing an increase in confirmed cases of COVID-19. In the past two weeks, daily new cases, the overall positivity rate, and hospitalizations in Texas have increased. Some of the largest cities in the state, where They find these CBTS sites localized – they are experiencing one-day records of new cases, “the letter said. “Now is not the time to end a program that is working and successfully increasing testing capacity, especially for underserved communities in the state. Due to the recent increase in COVID-19 cases in Texas, cities need time. additional to prepare for the transition to state and local control of the test sites. ”
Initially there were 41 sites in 12 states and now there are 13 in five states: Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New Jersey.
Undersecretary of Health Brett Giroir aired a call with reporters on Wednesday saying states like Texas could choose to fund the sites with the more than $ 10 billion allocated to them last month to support coronavirus testing.
He said the federal government “will continue to increase the evidence across the board” despite Trump’s comments.
“We are going to increase the quality of the evidence. The diversity of the evidence. The accessibility of the evidence. And our targeting of the evidence to the needy and vulnerable,” added Giroir.
CNN’s Kristen Holmes, Lauren Fox, Priscilla Alvarez, Ali Zaslav and Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.
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