WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top Trump administration officials are set to testify at a public Senate hearing Tuesday about the coronavirus response and plans for people to return to work and school.
Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, is expected to testify by videoconference during the hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee because he has decided to self-quarantine after possibly being exposed to COVID-19.
May 12, 202002:31
This is the Democrats’ first opportunity since March to grill top administration officials on their response to the coronavirus.
Democrats have blasted President Donald Trump for failing to put together a national testing strategy that would allow millions of people to get tested for the disease quickly. Trump blocked Fauci from testifying before the House last week, saying its members are “a bunch of Trump haters.”
In an email to The New York Times, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he plans to warn senators Tuesday of the consequences if the country opens too early.
“The major message that I wish to convey to the Senate HLP committee tomorrow is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely,” he wrote. “If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”
Fauci’s testimony comes after Trump gave the impression of an improving situation Monday in which he falsely claimed in a tweet that “coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere.” He also accused Democrats of not reopening their states sooner, claiming that they are trying to hurt his re-election.
Some governors have begun to reopen their state economies even though a number of them have not met criteria outlined in the White House guidelines for the reopening of states. The plan unveiled by the coronavirus task force last month said states must first see a decrease in documented cases or positive tests within a 14-day period before starting to reopen.
Two of the other witnesses — Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Stephen Hahn, the head of the Food and Drug Administration — will also testify by videoconference Tuesday because they are also self-quarantining for 14 days. The fourth witness is Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health and the administration’s coronavirus testing coordinator. It’s unclear whether he will testify in person.
