6 ways the Trump administration has already botched responding to the coronavirus
1. Sick and healthy passengers from a quarantined cruise ship were sent on the same flight home.
2. Despite telling Americans to get tested for the virus, US health agencies are behind the eight-ball with testing lagging behind.
The U.S. is lagging far behind other nations in testing for the coronavirus amid a lack of funding, with Switzerland, despite having a population 38 times smaller, able to conduct 1,000 tests per day.
As of Wednesday, only 445 Americans had been tested for the virus.
3. A coronavirus patient in California wasn't tested for days.
Federal restrictions resulted in a California patient with the coronavirus having to wait days to be tested, according to a New York Times report.
Today, California announced there are 8,400 people being monitored in the state for the virus.
4. CDC testing has been limited, so the full extent of the virus stateside is hard to pin down.
The U.S. government's version of the Coronavirus test has had some hiccups and was proven faulty, leading to doubts around the statistics attempting to pin down the outbreak's severity stateside, according to a Washington Post report.
5. On top of all that, Trump has made funding cuts to the CDC over the past two years.
In 2018, the CDC axed 80% of its capabilities to combat disease outbreaks due to a funding depletion while the White House jettisoned a position on the National Security Council specifically for respond to a global pandemic. In the latest budget, the White House sought to cut CDC's budget by 16%.
6. A US patient infected with the coronavirus was accidentally released from the hospital after initial tests failed to pick up symptoms.
An American evacuee who was infected with the Wuhan coronavirus was accidentally released from a San Diego hospital.
After being evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan earlier this month, the patient was initially brought to a quarantine facility with three others after they all tested negative for the virus.
The person has returned to a US hospital for more observation and isolation.
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