Administration

Surgeon General tells media to stop ‘finger-pointing’ at the Trump administration’s coronavirus response

by Jessie Hellmann 03/14/20 01:49 PM ET

Surgeon General Jerome Adams told White House reporters Saturday that there should be no more “criticism or finger-pointing” at the Trump administration’s coronavirus response.

“We really need you all to lean into and prioritize the health and safety of the American people,” Adams said at a briefing with Vice President Pence and other members of the White House’s coronavirus task force.

“No more bickering. No more partisanship. No more criticism or finger-pointing,” he continued. “There’ll be plenty of time for that.”

The Trump administration has come under intense scrutiny from members of Congress and the media for its lackluster response to the coronavirus, which has now infected at least 2,500 people in the U.S.

Members of Congress have been frustrated by the slow pace of testing, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the public health labs it works with completing only 16,542 tests since the first case was detected in the U.S. in January.

Other countries experiencing outbreaks, such South Korea, are running 10,000 tests a day.

Because there aren’t enough test kits available, doctors and public health officials are limiting testing to people who are seriously ill or are at risk because they’re elderly or have underlying health conditions.

As a result, it’s not clear how many people in the U.S. have the coronavirus, but some experts estimate there are thousands of undetected cases.

But Adams said there should be “more stories on how people can protect themselves, more on how people can get the resources that they need that we’ve unleashed from the federal government and state and local governments” and “less stories looking at what happened in the past. Again, there’ll be time for that.”

President Trump on Friday vowed to overhaul the coronavirus testing approach in the U.S., with “drive-thru” options available in some locations and a website designed by Google.

However, Google later rebuffed that claim, stating that Verily Life Sciences, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is in the early stages of designing a website for use in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding over time.

Pence said Saturday that more details about the testing and website will be announced Sunday at 5 p.m.