Sunday on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) accused President Donald Trump of not doing enough “proactively” to help slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in America.
Host Joy Reid asked, “Let’s first talk about New Jersey, your home state. I have a headline here that says one testing site reached capacity, and it reached capacity 35 minutes after opening. The governor, Phil Murphy, issued stay at home orders for nearly all of the state’s 9 million residents. Can you give us the state of play in New Jersey, and from your point of view as a senator, are there enough tests available?”
Booker said, “The short answer to are there enough tests is no. Our governor is doing an extraordinary job in getting these drive through testing centers up. The first one was up, and it was oversubscribed right away. But we have a few others that are online to come up very, very soon. Again, we are still doing nationwide, a fraction of the number of tests we need to do. A lot of this was a problem caused by this administration that they did not really do enough proactively to prepare this country, had mistakes, and bungles along the way.”
He continued, “But a lot of our governors, particularly governor of New Jersey is doing extraordinary job making the best out of a bad situation and slowly catching up. New Jersey will see the number of tests being done continue to go up. One word of caution to all Americans, do not go get a test if there is no reason to get a test. If you’re showing no symptoms, and haven’t been around somebody that had the coronavirus, don’t clog our testing centers. One thing you might want to do before you go get tested is consult with your doctor to see if you need one, because what you do, if you go there, then you prevent others who might need a test and based on that result of that test we could be actually helping to bend this curve. So, again, make thoughtful decisions when it comes to testing, please.”
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