The Trump administration's health officials will testify about the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic via video conference in a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, the panel's chairman Lamar Alexander said on Sunday.
According to a CNN report, Anthony Fauci, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, CDC director Robert Redfield and coronavirus testing coordinator Brett Giroir will testify on Tuesday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Fauci, Redfield and Hahn are all self-quarantining after coming into "low risk" contact with a White House staffer who tested positive for the virus.
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Gov. John Bel Edwards, about the coronavirus response, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, April 29, 2020. /AP
This will be the first time that Trump's health officials to testify before a congressional committee examining the government's response to the pandemic, after the White House said it would block members of the coronavirus task force from the hearing.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been one of the leading medical experts helping to guide the U.S. response to the highly contagious virus that has swept across the United States.
At a House hearing on March 12, Fauci said people cannot get tests for the virus easily and the U.S. testing system is not meeting the country's needs.
"The system is not really geared to what we need right now... That is a failing. Let's admit it," Fauci said. "The idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we're not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes. But we're not."
Trump has repeatedly clashed with the Democratic-controlled House over its moves to investigate his actions or those of his administration, even claiming that the House is "a bunch of Trump haters."
(With input from Reuters)