HHS Secretary Azar hits back at Navarro’s criticism of CDC: ‘Inaccurate and inappropriate'

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Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar details 'Operation Warp Speed' and progress on a COVID-19 vaccine.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar hit back Monday at White House trade adviser Peter Navarro for his coronavirus-related criticism of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a striking public spat between two wings of the Trump administration.

“The comments regarding the CDC are inaccurate and inappropriate,” Azar said on Fox News'  “America’s Newsroom” Monday.

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Azar’s comments come after Navarro slammed the CDC over the weekend, saying the agency “let the country down” in its early stages of testing for COVID-19.

"Early on in this crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space -- really let the country down with the testing,” Navarro said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." “Not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test and that set us back.”

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But Azar defended the agency Monday, saying they “had one error, which was in scaling up the manufacturing of the tests they had developed.”

“There was a contamination that didn’t affect the accuracy of the test, it just led to inconclusive results,” Azar said, adding that the CDC “fixed that within weeks and got it out.”

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Azar, though, said the CDC’s testing “was never going to be the backbone of testing in the United States.”

“What we need is the private sector to develop the tests ... get them on the market,” Azar said Monday.

Azar also defended the administration’s coronavirus testing methods, saying that President Trump “is delivering 300,000 tests per day” and that the U.S. has conducted over 10 million tests.

“That’s the private sector that brings that to bear,” Azar said. “That’s not the CDC.”

He added: “That’s really leveraging this whole of government approach that the president has marshaled here.”