WASHINGTON (AP) — A chorus of governors from both parties pushed back hard Monday after President Donald Trump accused Democrats of playing “a very dangerous political game” by insisting there is a shortage of tests for the coronavirus. The governors countered that the White House must do more to help states do the testing that’s needed before they can ease up on stay-at-home orders.
Kansas’ Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said the current federal effort “really is not good enough if we’re going to be able to start to open our economy. We cannot do that safely without the tests in place.”
The plea for stepped-up coordination came on the latest day when the Trump administration provided discordant messaging: Trump blasted state leaders on Twitter for being too dependent on federal government, while Vice President Mike Pence assured governors the government was working around-the-clock to help them ramp up testing.
Pence sought to soften the administration’s message amid growing clamor from governors of both parties for a national testing strategy to help secure in-demand supplies like testing swabs and chemical reagents. Trump said Sunday that he could use the Defense Production Act to compel one company to manufacture swabs.
“When it comes to testing, we’re here to help,” Pence told governors during a videoconference from the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Associated Press obtained audio of the call.
In Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said his state is working with another federal agency, the Food and Drug Administration, to find a source of reagent, the chemical used to analyze test results, so it can ramp up testing. “A lot of good things are going on, but we’re not there yet,” DeWine said. “And we’ve got a ways to go.”
In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom Trump has vacillated between praising and criticizing, said the states should take the lead on testing but it’s up to the federal government to help sort out supply chain issues facing testing manufacturers.
“What the states will run into is when you talk to those labs … they buy machines and equipment from national manufacturers,” Cuomo said. “And those labs can only run as many tests as the national manufacturers provide them chemicals, reagents and lab kits.”
As Pence spoke with the governors, Trump took to Twitter with a more combative tone than his vice president, complaining that the “radical left” and “Do Nothing Democrats” were playing politics with their complaints about a lack of tests.
The president in recent days has repeatedly compared governors’ concerns about a lack of screening capacity to earlier complaints that the states did not have enough ventilators to keep up with the federal government’s projections of individuals who would become hospitalized during the virus outbreak.
“Now they scream ….’Testing, Testing, Testing,’ again playing a very dangerous political game,” Trump tweeted. “States, not the Federal Government, should be doing the Testing – But we will work with the Governors and get it done. This is easy compared to the fast production of thousands of complex Ventilators!”
Public health experts say the country needs to dramatically increase its testing infrastructure if it is going to safely roll back restrictions and reopen businesses without risking a major spike in infections that would negate weeks of social distancing and economic strife.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday that the country is currently running about 1.5 million to 2 million tests per week. But, “we really need to get up to, at least, you know, maybe two times that, three times that.”
