Trump feeling the heat over virus agency cuts

The Trump administration unveiled a $2.5 billion (Dh9.18bn) plan to fight coronavirus, but President Donald Trump faced criticism for making sweeping cuts to government agencies that handle virus emergencies.

Critics say budget cuts made over the past two years are hampering Washington’s response to the virus as it spreads across the world.

Mr Trump asked Congress to approve $1.8bn in funding to tackle a threat that caused shares on Wall Street to plummet as alarm grows.

His plea was described as “too little, too late” by Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and Senate minority leader.

So far, there are 60 confirmed cases of the virus in the US.

But there are fears it could spread rapidly without clear measures to tackle it.

Nancy Messonnier, head of immunisation at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said the coronavirus could cause “severe disruption” to the lives of Americans.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country,” Ms Messonnier said.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen any more, but rather when this will happen and how many people will have severe illness.”

Her agency has been particularly badly affected by the Trump administration’s decision to slash spending.

In 2018, the centre said it would cut back or discontinue work it was doing to prevent epidemics in 39 countries.

That work was funded by a $582 million package put in place in 2015 by the president at the time, Barack Obama, to tackle the Ebola outbreak.

The Trump administration chose not to renew the package and it expired last year.

In May 2018, John Bolton, the administration’s national security adviser at the time, shut down the team responsible for co-ordinating the US response to a global health emergency.

Mr Trump also cut $30m from the State Department’s Complex Crises Fund, money that was used to fund experts when emergencies occurred.

There is a growing sense the administration was caught flat-footed by the Covid-19 crisis, especially after the centre was forced to stop distributing testing kits after they were found to be flawed.

Only 12 states and localities in the US have working kits.

Finding places to quarantine patients is also proving a challenge as politicians resist moves to have isolation centres set up in areas they represent.

Costa Mesa, a city of 113,000 about 65 kilometres south of Los Angeles, has even gone to court to block patients being housed within its boundaries.

“We are not going to continue to be the place where everybody drops off their crises and expects us to correct it,” Mayor Katrina Foley said.

Democrats have been swift to attack Mr Trump’s response to the outbreak, with the party’s presidential candidates attacking him during a televised debate on Tuesday.

“This great genius has told us that this coronavirus is going to end in two months,” US senator and Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders said.

Mr Trump responded on Twitter, saying: “So far we have not had one death. Let’s keep it that way.”

We expect we will see community spread in this country. It’s a question of when this will happen NANCY MESSONNIER Head of immunisation at US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention