Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander says expanding tests for coronavirus is the key to containing the disease, and he does not think the Trump administration erred by disbanding a pandemic response team two years ago.
Alexander, who is retiring later this year, spoke to WPLN News about the crisis and Washington’s response to it on Friday morning.
The chairman of the U.S. Senate Health Committee was in D.C. earlier this week trying to pass a stimulus package of $2.2 trillion dollars. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill Friday afternoon.
Alexander, who is retiring, says it’s been part of an eventful last year in office.
“The first three months have been impeachment, tornadoes and the coronavirus,” Alexander said. “This has been a busy three months.”
Alexander says the bipartisan stimulus has been one positive response to the crisis. He also credits the Trump administration for restricting international travel.
But, Alexander said the country needs to get better at testing people for coronavirus.
“We really weren’t prepared for the need for that,” Alexander said. “The importance of testing is, in my view, that as soon as everyone can get a test — who wants one — we can then detect that relatively few have the disease and isolate them and the rest of us can begin to go back to work.”
The senator has been touched personally by the pandemic. In a radio interview with “The Marc And Kim Show” on Knoxville’s 102.1 Friday morning, he said his daughter has tested positive.
Alexander says the country should not go back to normal, until the medical community says so.
“We don’t want to see a situation like they have in Italy, where you have cots thrown in a gym with people lying on them with ventilators,” Alexander said. “The only way we can contain this in the United States now is for us to follow the president’s and the governor’s recommendations which is that we stay home for a couple of weeks.”
Gov. Bill Lee has urged Tennesseans to avoid non-essential gatherings but has not issued a statewide shelter-in-place order. The Trump administration has also told Americans to socially distance themselves, but the president has lamented the economic cost of such measures and floated the possibility they could be rolled back by mid-April.
Meanwhile, the senator says he doesn’t think a U.S. Pandemic Response Team in the White House is necessary. The group was set up by the Obama administration but was eliminated by Trump to save costs. Alexander says the country can rely on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prepare for pandemics.
But he says the federal government needs to do a better job coordinating testing. He also says he’s recommended the president and vice president step back and “let professionals do the talking” — like allowing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, continue to explain to the country the latest on the coronavirus.
“We have some superior public health people in the country and in the state of Tennessee,” Alexander said. “We need to let them do their jobs.”
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