WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On January 21, the day the very first U.S. case of coronavirus was reported, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared on Fox News to report the most recent on the disease as it ravaged China. Alex Azar, a 52- year-old attorney and previous drug market executive, ensured Americans the U.S. federal government was prepared.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Person Provider (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar speaks to press reporters about Trump administration efforts to fight the coronavirus break out outside the White Home in Washington, U.S., February 28,2020 REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
” We established a diagnostic test at the CDC, so we can verify if somebody has this,” Azar said. “We will be spreading that diagnostic around the country so that we have the ability to do fast screening on website.”
While coronavirus in Wuhan, China, was “possibly severe,” Azar assured viewers in America, it “was one for which we have a playbook.”
Azar’s preliminary comments misfired on 2 fronts. Like many U.S. authorities, from President Donald Trump on down, he undervalued the pandemic’s seriousness. He likewise overstated his company’s readiness.
As is now commonly understood, 2 agencies Azar managed as HHS secretary, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, would not create feasible tests for 5 and half weeks, even as other countries and the World Health Company had currently prepared their own.
Quickly after his televised comments, Azar tapped a trusted aide with very little public health experience to lead the agency’s everyday action to COVID-19 The aide, Brian Harrison, had actually joined the department after running a dog-breeding organisation for 6 years. Five sources say some authorities in the White House derisively called him “the canine breeder.”
Azar’s optimistic public declaration and option of an inexperienced supervisor are emblematic of his firm’s oft-troubled action to the crisis. His HHS is a leviathan department, overseeing practically every federal public health company in the country, with a $1.3 trillion budget plan that surpasses the gross national product of most nations.
Azar and his top deputies manage health firms that were sluggish to alert the general public to the magnitude of the crisis, to produce a test to inform clients if they were ill, and to provide protective masks to healthcare facilities even as doctors advocated them.
The very first test developed by the CDC, indicated to be used by other laboratories, was plagued by a glitch that rendered it ineffective and wasn’t repaired for weeks. It wasn’t till March that checks by other laboratories entered into production. The absence of tests “limited health centers’ capability to keep track of the health of clients and personnel,” the HHS Inspector General stated in a report this month. The equipment scarcity “put staff and clients at risk.”
A promised infection monitoring program failed to take root, in spite of assurances Azar offered to Congress. Rather than share details, three existing and three previous federal government officials informed Reuters, Azar and leading personnel sidelined crucial companies that might have played a higher-profile function in attending to the pandemic. “It was a mess,” stated a White House authorities who dealt with HHS.
Officials throughout the federal government, from President Trump on down, have been blasted for America’s halting reaction to the pandemic. Critics inside and outside the administration state a meaningful share of the duty lies with HHS and Trump appointee Azar.
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