The US President has pledged to begin testing for COVID-19 “on a very large scale.”
President Donald Trump did not provide any further detail on the changes to federal testing procedures.
He made the announcement in a Tweet while criticising his predecessor’s administration for its response to the Swine Flu epidemic in 2009.
For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2020
.... Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2020
It comes after the Trump administration suspended all flights from mainland Europe to the US for 30 days.
Under the order, anyone who has been to one of the 26 Schengen countries in the past 14 days will not be allowed into the US.
The UK and Ireland are not in the Schengen area and were not included in the ban.
The order specifically references Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
According to the latest figures, the US has now reported over 1,700 cases of COVID-19, with 40 people reported to have died.
Media reports from the US have claimed that delays in testing set back the country's response to the outbreak.
