US eliminated key CDC position in China prior to coronavirus outbreak

SCREEN CAPTURE / NBC

CDC director Robert Redfield and Donald Trump.

ASAM NEWS

The White House this summer eliminated a key US position that could have alerted the US of the coronavirus outbreak in China, Reuters exclusively reported Sunday.
The Centers for Disease Control had embedded the American medical epidemiologist in China’s disease control agency to train others to help track, investigate and contain diseases.

“If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster,” said Bao-Ping Zhu, a Chinese American who worked in that position from 2007 to 2011.

Linda Quick, the last person in that role, left the position in July.

Zhu said Quick could have provided real-time information to US officials early in the outbreak, because China wa trying to hide information about the virus at the time. The CDC said it first learned of the virus on Dec. 31. but it did not warn the public about the virus until Feb. 25.

Speaking Sunday during a news conference, Trump defended his budget.

“We actually gave CDC more money, not less money. They said we defunded. It turned out it was more money,” Trump said. “Everyone of those things that were said were 100 percent wrong.”

Democrats first brought up those budget cuts back in February. An ABC analysis found both sides of the debate are correct.

Trump has called for budget cuts at CDC every year, but Congress has passed spending bills every year to actually increase the budget.

“Budgets are like the first move in a chess game with, I’ll be honest, a fairly profligate Congress,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said to ABC. “And the president starts that move with a budget knowing that we’re going to get a lot higher there as we work with Congress.”