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Trump Administration Sends Mixed Signals on Coronavirus Testing Any American Can Now Be Tested for the Coronavirus, Pence Says
(about 8 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration sent mixed signals on Tuesday about how quickly testing for the coronavirus would ramp up, stressing that close to a million coronavirus tests should be available this week but also that the number of tests to be administered remained unknown. WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had lifted all restrictions on testing for the coronavirus and would be releasing new guidelines to fast-track testing for people who fear they have the virus, even if they are displaying mild symptoms.
Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said at a Senate hearing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was working with a private manufacturer to drastically increase the testing capacity of laboratories across the nation. “Today we will issue new guidance from the C.D.C. that will make it clear that any American can be tested, no restrictions, subject to doctor’s orders,” Mr. Pence told reporters at the White House. “Any American can be tested. We’re removing that barrier.”
The Trump administration has struggled to project confidence and progress in the fight against the coronavirus and simultaneously prepare Americans for what could be a difficult struggle. The slow start in testing for the virus has been particularly vexing.
Officials at the White House emphasized that the supply of tests may not fully meet demand until the coming weeks. But they said that around 2,500 test kits for more than one million individual tests could be available by the end of the week, and that an additional million tests could be manufactured weekly after that.
“We are trying to meet that demand with increased capacity,” Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told reporters during the briefing. “Right now, I’d say we’d need more capacity.”
On Saturday, the F.D.A. gave laboratories and hospitals around the country the go-ahead to conduct tests that had been limited to those analyzed by the C.D.C., which had been enforcing strict guidelines about who was allowed to be tested. Mr. Pence’s announcement on Tuesday loosened those regulations further.
Dr. Hahn said at a Senate hearing that the C.D.C. was working with a private manufacturer to drastically increase the testing capacity of laboratories across the nation.
“Our expectation in talking to the company that is scaling this up is that we should have the capacity by the end of the week to have kits available to the laboratories to perform about a million tests,” he said.“Our expectation in talking to the company that is scaling this up is that we should have the capacity by the end of the week to have kits available to the laboratories to perform about a million tests,” he said.
White House officials, however, stressed that the number of tests actually administered could be considerably lower. When Dr. Hahn was asked to clarify, he said that he was hearing from private manufacturers that 2,500 test kits could be available by the end of the week, with each kit capable of 500 tests. When Dr. Hahn was asked to clarify, he said he was hearing from private manufacturers that 2,500 test kits could be available by the end of the week, with each kit capable of 500 tests. Later in the day, Mr. Pence repeated that number to reporters, saying the kits amounted to 1.5 million tests.
“This is a dynamic process,” Dr. Hahn said. “Every day we’re hearing from additional manufacturers.”“This is a dynamic process,” Dr. Hahn said. “Every day we’re hearing from additional manufacturers.”
The F.D.A. has said that Dr. Hahn was taking into account the anticipated production of test kits by Integrated DNA Technologies, which is now selling kits to the federal government and other buyers. But that would not increase the capacity of individual labs to perform the tests.
The confusion typified the struggle by the Trump administration to project confidence and progress without misleading the public about the virus’s spread. New infections in Westchester County, N.Y., San Mateo County, Calif., and Fulton County, Ga., since Monday evening made clear coronavirus was spreading in the sprawl of America’s largest urban centers and was no longer tethered to international travelers. In the United States, there have been at least 105 cases of coronavirus confirmed by lab tests as of Tuesday morning, and worldwide infections topped 92,200.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Politico that Americans should expect the outbreak to worsen.
“I don’t think that we are going to get out of this completely unscathed,” he said. “I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say, ‘boy, that was bad.’”
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The number of tests that will be administered in the coming days could be substantially lower than the projection Dr. Hahn had offered. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said Monday that public health labs currently can test 15,000 people, and could test up to 75,000 by the end of the week, numbers that fall well short of what Dr. Hahn suggested could result from private manufacturing. But under questioning from senators in both parties, Mr. Pence, who is leading the administration’s coronavirus response, and other top health officials were unable to satisfy lawmakers’ concerns.
The Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local government laboratories around the country, has said that its labs would be able to conduct about 10,000 tests a day when all of its 100 members that can perform testing are running. Scott Becker, the executive director of the lab association, said Monday that labs can run about 100 tests per day. As of Monday, he said fewer than half of those labs were able to do so. “They could not answer how soon people would be able to get the tests,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, emerging from a lunchtime briefing with Mr. Pence and top health officials. “We need an on-site test, not a test that has to be sent far away and sent back, and we need to know where people can get it, how people can get it.”
Dr. Fauci told Politico that he would be truthful in his public pronouncements, even as President Trump sought to minimize the virus’s impact. Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and a medical doctor, agreed that “there was concern about the testing — a lot of concern about testing.”
“You should never destroy your own credibility. And you don’t want to go to war with a president,” Dr. Fauci told Politico in an interview Friday. “But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.” “The point was made in there that everybody who gets sick is above age 50 almost,” Mr. Cassidy continued, “and nobody has been dying less than age 20, but that doesn’t mean they’re not infected.”
At several hearings across Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning, other Trump administration officials spoke to different elements of the federal response. Democrats also raised concerns with the officials about making sure the test is “not so costly that people don’t get it,” Mr. Schumer said. “And there were no answers to those vital questions.”
Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday that he ordered a department field office in King County, Wash., to close for 14 days after learning that one of its employees visited a relative at Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., a nursing home where four of the six Americans who have died of the virus lived. The issue of vaccine affordability is a final sticking point in negotiations on an emergency aid package to respond to the virus, which lawmakers and staff members said they hoped to unveil late Tuesday. Mr. Schumer said the package, which is expected to be at least $7 billion, would include funding to state and local agencies responding to the virus, as well as funding for equipment and the development of a vaccine.
Mr. Wolf said he also directed employees at the field office to quarantine themselves for 14 days. The package, which has been quickly cobbled together over the past few days, is expected to be far larger than the White House’s initial proposal: $1.25 billion in new funds, paired with a transfer of existing funds from other health programs.
The employee visited Life Care Center before it became a focal point of the outbreak, Mr. Wolf said. House Democrats have said they hope to hold a vote on the emergency bill by the end of the week. Democrats want to ensure that drugmakers charge the government reasonable prices for treatments and vaccines once they become available.
“This employee embodied leading by example,” Mr. Wolf said. “We believe that the vaccine should be very cost-effective, and not be out of the reach of average folks,” Mr. Schumer said. “That’s one of the arguments that’s still being disputed.”
In another hearing, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said that the Trump administration is working with other countries to do everything possible to curb the spread of the virus and to limit damage to the global economy. New infections in Westchester County, N.Y.; San Mateo County, Calif.; Wake County, N.C., and Fulton County, Ga., since Monday evening made clear that the coronavirus was spreading in the sprawl of America’s largest urban centers and was no longer tethered to international travelers. In the United States, there have been at least 120 cases of coronavirus confirmed by lab tests as of Tuesday evening, and worldwide infections neared 93,000.
“The administration is closely monitoring the coronavirus and its effect on public health as well as any effects on supply chains, markets and the broader economy,” Mr. Mnuchin said, adding that the White House wanted to work closely with Congress for emergency funding. On Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed that a veteran had tested positive for the virus for the first time, and was transferred to the V.A. hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. The case presented the federal government with a new challenge, a coronavirus infection in its sprawling veterans health care system.
Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told Mr. Mnuchin that any stimulus package should be centered around infrastructure investment rather than additional tax cuts. The number of tests that will actually be administered in the coming days could be substantially lower than the administration’s projection of one million by next week. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that public health labs can currently test 15,000 people, and could test up to 75,000 by the end of this week.
“If there’s a need to stimulate the economy as a result of the coronavirus, I’m sure that infrastructure is a priority of the president,” Mr. Mnuchin said. The Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local government laboratories around the country, has said that its labs would be able to conduct about 10,000 tests a day when all of its 100 members that can perform testing are running. Scott Becker, the executive director of the lab association, said on Monday that labs can run about 100 tests per day. As of Monday, he said fewer than half of those labs were able to do so.
Mr. Mnuchin said the Trump administration was not considering rolling back or suspending its tariffs on Chinese imports to mitigate the economic effects of the coronavirus. “All that matters is how many people you can test a day,” said Scott Gottlieb, who was the F.D.A. commissioner from 2017 to 2019.
He said that the Treasury Department had set up a group to begin looking at tax measures that the Trump administration could take to provide relief to small and medium-sized businesses. He said that the White House could present proposals to Congress for such action if needed. As they learned on Tuesday that the death toll in their state had reached nine, the two Democratic senators from Washington pressed Mr. Pence and the health officials about both the administration’s response and its message to the public, particularly about the availability of testing.
As the Trump administration officials testified, lawmakers were working on an emergency spending bill, hoping to pass it before a mid-March break. The legislation, which could be unveiled Tuesday, is expected to be worth $7 billion to $8 billion. “Our message to them was, be clear that they aren’t readily available, and the universe of people who have access to them is not large enough,” Senator Maria Cantwell said. “Let’s figure out a more aggressive plan.”
The package, which has been quickly negotiated over the past few days, is expected to be significantly larger than what the White House initially proposed eight days ago: $1.25 billion in new funds, paired with a transfer of existing funds from other health programs. The state’s other senator, Patty Murray, said she had been hearing from constituents who were desperately calling “every number they can find” for information, and cannot get through.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Alan Rappeport contributed reporting from Washington, Katie Thomas from Chicago and Knvul Sheikh from New York. “I think there’s a lot of concern about honest, accurate reflection of what is real when you have something like this happening,” Ms. Murray said.
She criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to play down the effects of the virus.
“What I really feel strongly about is, we do not need Mick Mulvaney telling people don’t watch TV,” she added, referring to remarks made by the acting White House chief of staff. “We do not need the president saying this is fear mongering.”
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Politico in an interview on Friday that Americans should expect the outbreak to worsen.
“I don’t think that we are going to get out of this completely unscathed,” he said. “I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say, ‘Boy, that was bad.’”
Dr. Fauci also said that he would be truthful in his public pronouncements, even as President Trump sought to minimize the virus’s impact.
“You should never destroy your own credibility. And you don’t want to go to war with a president,” Dr. Fauci told Politico. “But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.”
Reporting was contributed by Catie Edmondson, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Nicholas Fandos, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Jennifer Steinhauer and Alan Rappeport from Washington; Katie Thomas from Chicago; and Knvul Sheikh from New York.