Trump: ‘I Am Hearing Good Things on the Ground’ About Coronavirus Testing Despite Shortage
Doctors on the ground have said there are major shortages of supplies and coronavirus tests.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Thursday that despite many health care workers saying there is a mass shortage of medical equipment and tests for the novel coronavirus, he is hearing “good things on the ground.” During a Thursday press conference about the virus, Trump said he could not explain the gap between his assertion that there are thousands of coronavirus tests available and the shortages being reported on the ground nationwide.
“I cannot explain a gap. I’m hearing very good things on the ground. We had to ramp up, they had an obsolete system and they had a system simultaneously that was not meant for this… nobody knew that there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before,” he said, adding that he was working with local governments to get states the supplies they need. “The system is starting to work out very well but we had to break a system like breaking an egg because the system we had was obsolete and didn’t work and that was the system we inherited.”
Reporter: Can you explain why there is a gap between what you are saying about masks and tests being widely available and what doctors are saying on the ground?
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 19, 2020
Trump: "I can’t explain the gap. I am hearing good things on the ground." pic.twitter.com/vvoE1YCt9V
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