“But yesterday, you celebrated that we had done more tests and more tests per capita even in South Korea,” he told Admiral Brett Giroir, a top Department of Health and Human Services official. “I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever.”
“You ignored the fact that they accomplished theirs at the beginning of the outbreak while we treaded water during February and March. And as a result, by 6 March, the US had completed just 2,000 tests, whereas South Korea had conducted more than 140,000 tests,” he said before adding, “So, partially as a result of that, they have 256 deaths and we have almost 80,000 deaths.”
Romney then defended Obama:
“My impression is that, with regards to vaccines, where I’m critical of what we have done at testing, at vaccines we’ve done a pretty darn good job of moving ahead pretty aggressively,” said Romney. “And yet the president said the other day that President Obama is responsible for our lack of a vaccine.”
“Dr. Fauci, is President Obama, or by extension President Trump, did they do something that made the likelihood of creating a vaccine less likely?” he asked “Are either President Trump or President Obama responsible for the fact that we don’t have a vaccine now, or in delaying it in some way?”
Fauci said, “No, senator. Not at all. Certainly, President Obama nor President Trump are responsible for our not having a vaccine.”
“We moved, as you said — because I described it in my opening statement — rather rapidly,” he added, “No one has ever gone from knowing what the virus was to a phase one trial as fast as we’ve done.”
"I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever," Sen. Mitt Romney says, pointing out that other nations will have testing rates go down because they don't have the kind of outbreak seen in the U.S. https://t.co/OxeN3yh9Q7 pic.twitter.com/2rgNN08wTk— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 12, 2020
Sen. Mitt Romney criticizes the Trump administration’s progress on access to coronavirus vaccines: “I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever.” https://t.co/Wj0PoWurQ9 pic.twitter.com/vCbDzcim9l— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 12, 2020
