US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has slammed Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak as “anaemic and too late”.
It comes ahead of a press conference on Wednesday after the president is briefed by officials in the health department and the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Mr Trump has previously said not to worry about the spread of Covid-19 because it is “going to go away soon”, probably by “April”.
But Ms Pelosi, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, condemned this outlook, saying: “This is shameful.”
“He puts forth a proposal now that is meagre, anaemic in terms of addressing this.
“Ebola, we did $5 billion. And now they’re trying to take the Ebola money and spend it here.”
“What he’s doing is late, too late, anemic,” she added.
“Hopefully we can make up for the loss of time but we have to have professionals in place, resources that are adequate and not use scare tactics about people coming back to our country.”
According to NBC, the Trump administration is requesting $1.25 billion in new funding and wants to transfer $535 million more from an Ebola preparedness account.
The White House anticipates shifting money from other Department of Health and Human Services accounts and other agencies to complete a $2.5 billion response plan.
On Tuesday, the CDC warned that the spread of coronavirus in the US was a question of when, not if, and urged communities to prepare.
The only cases of Covid-19 to be identified in the US are from 12 travellers returning from abroad, and two patients who had contact with those returning travellers.
Coronavirus has not yet spread beyond those few close contacts in the US.
