HHS’ slow response was traced to the secretary’s distrust of aides and fear of offending Trump.
Even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention takes blame for testing delays that may have led to hundreds of Americans being quietly infected with the coronavirus, officials inside the health department and the White House are increasingly pointing the finger at one leader: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who they say failed to coordinate the response, as agency chiefs waited for instructions that came too late and other deputies were largely cut out of the process.
Story continues“The administration’s response has been reactive, not proactive,” added a former HHS official. “A lot of what has happened has been driven by outside pressure,” like public health labs sounding the alarm that they were unable to perform the CDC’s tests. Pence also added Hahn to the coronavirus task force after growing upset during a recent meeting that nobody could adequately answer a question about threats to the nation’s drug supply, two people with knowledge of the situation said.
Asked if Azar was responsible for the CDC's testing failures, the spokesperson took issue with the framing."Because of CDC surge capacity, there has been no backlog of tests despite the diagnostic issue," the spokesperson said, referencing problems that prevented many tests from working."It’s unfair to say testing has been limited."
Azar and his top aides also have for months frozen out Adams, who is close to Verma, and at times openly questioned Adams’ ability to handle basic duties and stay on message. Adams played down coronavirus fears in a Monday interview on"Fox and Friends," predicting that more people globally would die from the flu.
But two individuals said Redfield was wrongly being set up by some HHS officials as the fall guy for the administration’s biggest coronavirus misstep — the lab-testing failure — arguing that the CDC chief had worked to speed the tests while advocating for a fallback lab-testing option but was waiting on Azar’s permission to move forward on Plan B.
The disjointed, at-times-chaotic coronavirus response has alarmed allies of the HHS secretary, who worry Azar will ultimately shoulder much of the blame within the administration and from the public for failing to contain the outbreak.
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