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President Trump on Friday deflected blame for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) slow coronavirus testing process, saying former President Obama “made changes that only complicated things further.”
“For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it,” Trump tweeted.
“It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped,” he added. “President Obama made changes that only complicated things further.”
In a follow-up tweet, Trump said the Obama administration’s response to H1N1 influenza “was a full scale disaster with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now.”
The CDC’s testing process has been a target of criticism as the coronavirus has spread throughout the United States. Instead of using the World Health Organization’s test kit, the CDC decided to make its own test, which slowed its response. Once the tests were finally rolled out, they weren’t fully effective.