Rep. Dan Crenshaw on Thursday demanded that the White House take a more active approach in directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to bolster coronavirus testing sites.
Mr. Crenshaw, a Texas Republican and one-time Navy SEAL, said that President Biden had failed to expand COVID-19 testing capacities even as cases have continued to rise.
“Congress has already appropriated tens of billions of dollars to this specific problem. Right now, it’s a management problem,” he said on Fox News. “The executive branch is not executing these dollars in an efficient manner.”
A lack of COVID-19 tests nationwide has persistently vexed Mr. Biden, who harshly criticized former President Trump for failing to provide tests. Mr. Biden vowed to do a better job when he took office nearly a year ago.
Mr. Biden last week promised to have 500 million at-home tests available for Americans. But on Wednesday, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, Jeff Zients, said the contracts to buy the kits won’t be ready until late next week.
Mr. Crenshaw said the White House should take a page from Mr. Trump’s pandemic playbook and push FEMA to ramp up its efforts to combat the virus.
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“What the federal government should be doing is using their FEMA resources to bolster a lot of these testing sites [and] open up new testing sites,” he said. “They should be using our resources to increase those supply chains to get those monoclonal antibodies out to people faster … helping us get more health care workers either from the military or from FEMA to aid in some of these hospitals that are feeling a little bit overwhelmed.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Biden directed FEMA to help build more hospitals, pop-up vaccinations clinics and testing sites across the country.
His critics say the move came too late, especially as coronavirus cases have soared in recent weeks.
As of Wednesday, the average number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases within the U.S. hit a record high of more than 258,000 over the past week. Overall, more than 76,000 people are hospitalized because of the coronavirus across the country.
More than half of all new cases result from the omicron variant, which was first detected in South Africa last month.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Haris Alic can be reached at halic@washingtontimes.com.
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