Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar added to the long list of worrying or downright scary coronavirus comments from Trump administration officials in a CNN appearance Tuesday morning. Azar admitted to having absolutely no idea how many people have been tested for COVID-19 in the U.S., even as the number confirmed to have the disease keeps growing.
Asked by CNN’s John Berman how many Americans have been tested, Azar responded, “We don’t know exactly how many because hundreds of thousands of our tests have gone out to private labs and hospitals that currently do not report in to CDC.” Doesn’t that seem like something public health officials should have some idea about?
“We’re working with the CDC and those partners to get an IT reporting system up and running, hopefully this week, where we would be able to get that data, to keep track of how many we’re testing,” Azar continued. He suggested that up to 10,000 people a day could be tested now, with the number potentially rising to 20,000 by the end of the week—but that sounded extremely hypothetical and is based on a study by the American Enterprise Institute, not on, say, CDC predictions. Continue reading.