Skip to main content
Press Release

SHOT/CHASER: Trump Claims He Hasn’t “Heard About Testing Being A Problem” Despite Cries For Help From States

By March 30, 2020March 31st, 2020No Comments

SHOT/CHASER: Trump Claims He Hasn’t “Heard About Testing Being A Problem” Despite Cries For Help From States

SHOT: President Trump claimed today he hasn’t heard about the well-documented lack of testing “in weeks”, and that he hasn’t heard “about testing being a problem”

  •  “‘I haven’t heard about testing in weeks,’ the president said. ‘We’ve tested more now than any nation in the world. We’ve got these great tests and we’re coming out with a faster one this week.’ Reiterating his point, Mr. Trump added: ‘I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.’” [New York Times, 3/30/20]

CHASER: State, city officials and medical professionals have been sounding the alarm about a lack of testing on a daily basis 

  • March 28: Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner Estimated That His City Had Ten Times More Coronavirus Cases Than Had Been Confirmed But Lacked Enough Tests To Properly Diagnose. “‘Let me just say, the testing has been limited. We know there are more cases,’ the mayor said. “The way I look at it, I take 232 and I multiply by 10. Because we just don’t know.’ The city’s efforts to expand testing were dealt a blow Saturday when the federal government told Turner it would only send enough personal protective gear to conduct 250 tests a day in the nation’s fourth-largest city.” [Houston Chronicle, 3/28/20]

  • March 26: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Announced That A Lack Of Supplies Meant Florida Had Only Tested 30,000 People Despite Having Capacity To Administer Up To 625,000 Tests. “Though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced Florida’s capacity to administer Covid-19 tests for up to 625,000 Floridians, a lack of supplies, including swabs, means only an estimated 30,000 people have been tested to date, per data from the state’s Department of Public Health. ‘We’re not doing enough testing in our state,’ Deutch told CNN’s New Day Thursday. ‘We have no idea how many cases there really are because we’re testing so few people.’” [CNN, 3/28/20]

  • March 28: CNN: “Even States With Smaller Populations Like Wyoming Have Found Themselves Limited By A Dearth Of Swabs To Use In Test Kits.” “Even states with smaller populations like Wyoming have found themselves limited by a dearth of swabs to use in test kits. The federal government sent the state three testing kits last week, each with the capacity to test between 700 and 800 patients, but public information officer Kim Deti in the state’s public health office told CNN the limiting factor has been collecting and transporting the samples. ‘There’s a lot of confusion on the testing, they might be running out of things to collect the swab, but we’ve got enough to run tests at these facilities,’ she told CNN in an interview Monday.” [CNN, 3/28/20]

  • March 27: A survey conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, found that 92.1% (186 of 213) of participating cities did not have an adequate supply of coronavirus test kits available. [U.S. Conference of Mayors, 3/27/20]

  • March 18: Minnesota Governor Tom Walz: “I Watch A News Conference And They Tell Us We Have Testing Capacity, But I Am Telling You We Don’t Have Testing Capacity.” “‘I watch a news conference and they tell us we have testing capacity, but I am telling you we don’t have testing capacity. It is not out there yet,’ said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during a Wednesday news conference. His state has a current backlog of 1,700 samples waiting to be processed.” [Politico, 3/20/20]

  • March 12: Senator James Lankford (R-OK) Said The Trump Administration Was Unable To Give A Good Answer About When States Like Oklahoma Would Get Commercial Testing. “After a Senate briefing with Fauci and other officials, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) acknowledged that Trump’s recent statement that anyone who wants to get tested can get tested is ‘not consistent right now’ with what is actually happening. ‘We couldn’t get a good clear answer on when we’re going to get commercial testing out there, labs that can get faster responses and when we’re going to allow every person who wants to be tested to be able to be tested,’ he said.” [Washington Post, 3/12/20]

​​​​​​​ADDITIONAL CHASER: US Has Tested Much Smaller Proportion Of Its Population Than Other Countries Like South Korea

  • South Korea was able to test 287,000 people eight weeks after its first confirmed coronavirus case. The United States was only able to test 55,000 people in the same time frame.

  • As of today at 5:30 PM, based on Worldometer population estimates and publicly available testing estimates, South Korea has conducted Coronavirus tests on roughly 1-In-130 people while the United States has only tested roughly 1-In-330 people.