Doctor to CNN: Biden Administration 'Dropped the Ball' on Coronavirus Testing

Appearing Tuesday on CNN’s New Day, Brown University School of Public Health Dean Dr. Ashish Jha said President Joe Biden “dropped the ball” on coronavirus testing.

Dr. @ashishkjha applauded the CDC’s shortened isolation recommendation but says there is a distinction for the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

“When [vaccinated people] have a breakthrough infection, they shed for much shorter period of time. So this is really reasonable for” them pic.twitter.com/73PCH0tNTp

— New Day (@NewDay) December 28, 2021

A partial transcript is as follows:

KAITLAN COLLINS:  You saw President Biden yesterday acknowledging, pretty bluntly, that they need to do better when it comes to testing because we are seeing this nationwide shortage of those rapid at-home tests. It’s very difficult to just walk into a store and get one. And what we’re hearing from officials like Dr. Fauci is that they believe they’re gonna have this solved by mid-January, in a few weeks. But, how critical is the window that we’re missing right now for testing?

DR. ASHISH JHA: Oh, I think it’s incredibly critical, and I cannot believe this is where we are almost two years into the pandemic. Everybody saw it coming. We knew we needed more tests. I think the administration dropped the ball on this. They focus a lot on vaccines, which is terrific, vaccines are a really important part of this, but did not pay enough attention to testing. I think it’s been really costly in this holiday season.

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