Were Going Backwards With Coronavirus Response, Obama 'Ebola Czar' Warns

Ronald Klain , who headed the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola epidemic, warned that President Donald Trump ’s White House risks making the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. even worse with its ongoing lack of testing .

Klain, dubbed the Ebola czar after former President Barack Obama  tasked him with leading the U.S. response to the Ebola epidemic, told MSNBC ’s Nicole Wallace on Thursday that increased testing was crucial to slowing the spread of the contagion that has killed more than 34,000 people nationwide.

But “as a matter of math, our progress towards the goal is not going to ever get there because we’re going backwards,” Klain said. “We’re going to test fewer people in America this week than we did last week.”

“We’re not on a path to solve this problem, we’re on a path to make this problem worse,” Klain added. “That’s because the president doesn’t want to take leadership of these tests, he said that the tests are up to the states.”

Klain noted that governors did not have “the power, the ability to direct the manufacturers to make the different components” of the “complicated” testing kits, urging Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act to step up efforts or see a “continued miasma on testing that is not going to get better.”

Check out the clip here: