Health Secretary Alex Azar Condemns White House Adviser Peter Navarro’s ‘Inaccurate and Inappropriate’ CDC Attack

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar condemned White House economic adviser Peter Navarro’s coronavirus blame on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as “inaccurate and inappropriate” during a Monday appearance on Fox News.

Navarro alleged on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday that the CDC “really let the country down with the testing.” He added, “Not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test, and that set us back.”

Azar on Monday condemned the comments in an interview on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom. “The president’s own economic adviser Peter Navarro has gone on the record pointing fingers at the CDC for early on what he referred to as ‘bad testing.’ He said it ‘set us back.’ How do you respond to that this morning?” anchor Sandra Smith asked Azar.

“Well, the comments regarding the CDC are inaccurate and inappropriate,” Azar responded. “The CDC had one error which was in scaling up the manufacturing of the tests that they had developed.”

“There was a contamination that didn’t affect the accuracy of the tests, just led to inconclusive results,” he added. They fixed that within weeks and got it out. That was never going to be the backbone of testing in the U.S. That’s low throughput public health lab testing,” he continued. “What we need is the private sector to develop the tests. The Abbotts, the Roches, the Thermo Fishers, get them in the market.”

Watch above via Fox News.