US COVID deaths could have been ‘decreased substantially’

Deborah Birx, Trump-era coordinator of the COVID task force, says the previous government’s pandemic response was lacking.

The White House coronavirus task force coordinator under former President Donald Trump says she believes the COVID-19 death toll in the country would have been “decreased substantially” had the previous government responded more effectively in the early days of the outbreak. Dr Deborah Birx said that while the initial surge in March last year caught health officials off guard, better messaging and coordination from the government could have reduced the number of deaths later. “There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” Birx said in an interview with CNN. “The rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”