Trump slammed by Obama health secretary for false claims over swine flu

President attacks predecessor and CDC for test failure as illnesses surge in US

Donald Trump has blamed former president Barack Obama and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for delays in tests amid the coronavirus pandemic, despite the president controlling the agency for the last three years.

The Trump campaign also attacked former vice president Joe Biden for the previous administration's response to the H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak in 2009 and 2010, amid criticism of the president's current response to the Covid-19 crisis as cases climbed to 1,700, including 41 deaths.

Kathleen Sebelius, who led Obama's health department from 2009 to 2014, said it was "unfortunate" that the president cast blame on his predecessor instead of taking responsibility as the virus reaches a pandemic.

Last week, Mr Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the coronavirus has impacted only a "very, very small number" of people, while the swine flu outbreak sickened 60 million people over two years and falsely claimed that the Obama administration "didn't do anything about it."

But the Department of Health and Human Services declared the H1N1 outbreak a public health emergency on 26 April 2009, when there were only 20 confirmed cases of the virus at the time. Two days later, the administration requested Congressional funding to combat the virus, ultimately making more than $7bn in federal funds available for the vaccine and public health response.

Six months later, the president declared a national emergency, after the death toll reached 1,000. Over two years, there were nearly 13,000 swine flu-related deaths despite the two emergency declarations under the Obama administration.

Trump campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany blamed those deaths on Mr Biden while he "was in charge" of the epidemic. "By contrast, [Mr Trump] has led, taking unprecedented action to stop the coronavirus [and] protect Americans!"

By contrast, more than 1,700 people in the US are confirmed to have the latest coronavirus, and at least 41 people have died following the outbreak, after it was first confirmed in the country in January. The president called for congressional funding a month later, as the CDC confirmed at least 35 infections

Following Mr Biden's remarks on Thursday that addressed the president's response to the virus, including his ban on most travel from Europe into the US despite the urging of public health officials that the outbreak's threat already exists within untested communities throughout the country, Mr Trump's campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said Mr Biden exhibited "terrible judgment and incompetence in the face of public health issues" and was merely using his platform to "stoke citizens' fear" and "capitalise politically".

On Twitter, the president attacked his political foe and pointed to his approval ratings, saying: "Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record.

The attack came just two days after he called for an end to political partisanship in his national address aimed at calming the public.

The president also falsely claimed that the CDC's response was "a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now."

He said: "Changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!"

On MSNBC, Ms Sebelius said: "It's really unfortunate to have a president who continues to try to deny that we have an urgent health crisis in this country and find somebody else to blame ... Two days ago it was the Europeans at fault, now I guess it's somehow President Obama and our administration at fault."

Ms Sebelius said her agency's response "worked hard" to obtain a vaccine, coupled with global information sharing and a nationwide vaccine campaign that she says ultimately lowered the death toll to one much smaller than annual flu epidemics.

She said: "The economy did not shut down, we didn't have massive panic, but told people what we knew and what we didn't know and coordinated globally with our neighbours and partners on every step along the way ... So I have no idea why the president would choose at this moment to try and find blame somewhere else for some other epidemic."