‘We’ve had a very weak response’: Dr Desai hits out at Trump administration’s coronavirus measures

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An infectious disease physician hit out at the US government on Fox News, claiming the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in the US was caused by the government’s ‘weak response’.

Appearing on Fox News Dr Desai advised that the country needed to implement more aggressive lockdown measures to stem the number of cases by completely banning all air and rail travel.

“If we did do this shutdown if we shut down rail and airlines and did it the way I’m suggesting and really kind of policed it and had one squad car driving around making sure everyone’s in their homes we would see a drop off in cases within two weeks,” he said.

“Within two weeks the number of cases would start to fall and the entire country would breathe a sigh of relief.”

Talking about Covid-19 testing, the physician scorned the Trump administration’s slow response to testing of the virus, vehemently shaking his head when anchor Martha MacCallum suggested there were still a million tests available.

In response to a discussion about the FDA’s approval of new 15-minute testing, Dr Desai replied, “Yeah, they’re working on it ... They should’ve been working on it for months”.

“We knew coronavirus was coming, we knew that it was a respiratory disease, we knew it was person-to-person. Why is it that it is this week that the FDA finally approved these new Abbott lab testing?” he said.

He then pointed to South Korea as an example of a country having dealt with the pandemic successfully.

“Look at what South Korea did, and what we did,” he said.

“Their population is one-sixth of ours. Look at the cases they have. Look at the mortality they have. It’s a trifle compared to what we’re dealing with right now because we’ve had a very weak response and they had a really strong response.”

The video of the interview has since gone viral online, with videos of the segment trending on Twitter and many users applauding the physician’s blunt responses.

Users were jokingly sceptical that Dr Desai would be invited back as anchor Ms MacCallum suggested during the segment.

‘How to ensure you don’t get follow-up questions on Fox, apparently.’ one user tweeted.

‘Somebody decided to invite Dr Rishi Desai onto Fox. I don’t think they’ll be asking him back,’ another said.