According to ABC News 30/40, former assistant secretary of Human and Health Services (HHS) Chris Meekins told James Rosen, a Sinclair investigative reporter, that the CDC lied to President Trump and HHS Secretary Alex Azar about its ability to produce a Wuhan coronavirus test.
Trump and his administration were condemned over tests for lack of availability and unreliability.
THE ALLEGATION
In making the allegation, Chris Meekins, a former assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for preparedness and response, cited private discussions he has held in recent weeks with top federal officials and physicians and scientists employed in private-sector industries that are active in the anti-coronavirus effort. Meekins described his contacts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force as “friends,” some of whom he has known for many years.
“From my conversations with members of the task force, both inside and outside the administration,” Meekins told Sinclair in an exclusive interview, “The U.S. government, from Secretary Azar to the president relied on the Centers for Disease Control to produce a test; they failed….CDC said they would handle it….What we have found out is that these leaders at the CDC lied to both the HHS secretary and, by extension, the president. And as a result, the nation got weeks behind.”
CDC has acknowledged that its initial stab at mass production of the test kits encountered “a problem,” and that federal deployment of safe testing equipment lagged as a result.
They blamed the problem on a defect in the “manufacturing of one of the reagents.”
This disaster caused the President to turn to the private sector which is now in partnership with the CDC. The President has been lifting regulations and working with the FDA to get drugs approved.
Why do we have to rely on the government for everything? It doesn’t work.
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It could just be a misinterpretation. It’s hard to believe they would lie.
CDC OFFICIAL SAYS IT’S NOT TRUE
A CDC official, Dr. Robert Redfield said it was not true and Meekins is deceiving the public.
“CDC rapidly developed a diagnostic test for CDC and the nation’s public health labs,” the statement said. “Today, more than 89 public health labs in 50 states and the District of Columbia are using the COVID-19 test.
The White House declined to comment. A spokesman at HHS, asked about Meekins’s claim that Secretary Azar was deceived by CDC leadership, declined to provide any substantive response. The spokesman instead issued a statement affirming that “all of our leaders bring highly valuable experience and expertise to this effort,” and that officials at CDC and FDA are “working together to correct the issue with the diagnostic in a timely manner,” ABC News reported’
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