White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tried to defend her boss, President Joe Biden after he dropped the ball on America’s COVID-19 testing rollout, saying that had the President not acted, there wouldn’t be any tests at all on the market right now.
Psaki said:
Well, I would say we did take steps to rapidly increase our testing capacity as of the summer. And I would just go back to, kind of, the chain of events here to remind people of. And we forget June was a long time ago. But before the Delta variant was on the rise, there was not a demand for testing in this country. There really wasn’t.
Then Delta, obviously, increased the demand. We also had to take steps as a federal government to build up the market, because the market wasn’t there to meet if the demand rose.
What the President did with the Defense Production Act is to do exactly that: investing $3 billion several months ago to make sure we were building up the market, to make sure we had the capacity. We wouldn’t have had — there wouldn’t have been 500 billion [million] tests to order several months ago.
So, the $3 billion investment, the use of the Defense Production Act, actually increased capacity in the market. And that allowed us to quadruple our testing capacity and allowed us to get to this point where we’re able to make the significant order that we made.
I would also note that I said before, though, that — and also the FDA authorized five new at-home tests since October. So, the fact that there’s additional tests available has also meant that there’s additional capacity out there and different kinds of tests we can order from.
But the President knew that we needed to increase testing capacity. That’s why he used the Defense Production Act to expand the supply of at-home tests. Without that, we wouldn’t have the supply in the market.
There had been — I think the facts here are, though, important. I understand what you’re asking, but I’ve answered it a couple of times, and I’m trying to give you the facts and details so you can share them with your viewers.
So, using the Defense Production Act — without that and without five approved tests that have been — happened since October, there wouldn’t have been the supply to order then. Those are all pieces that are important components of the process here. That’s what I’m trying to convey.
