Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, chairman of the National Governors Association: “As you look towards federal solutions that will help alleviate the challenge, make sure that we do not let federal solutions stand in the way of state solutions and the, the production of 500 million rapid tests that will be distributed by the federal government is great. But obviously, that dries up the supply chain for the solutions that we might offer as governor.”
Joe Biden, U.S. President: “Look, there is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level.”
“My message to the governor is simple: ‘If you need something, say something’ and we, we’re going to have your back and any way we can.”
“Seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend it shows that we have more work to do.”
“We’ve worked with Google, so you can now search ‘COVID test near me’ on Google to find a location. And now I know the lines have gotten very long in some states, that’s why I ordered FEMA to set up pop up sites in places with high demand to shorten the wait.”
“Just three days ago, another test was cleared. We went from no over-the-counter test in January to 46 million in October, 100 million in November and almost 200 million in December. But it’s not enough. It’s clearly not enough. If we’ve known we would have gotten harder quicker if we could have.”
Reporter: “Why did your administration reject a holiday testing surge in October? Does the buck stops with you there? For rejecting the surge?”
Biden: “We didn’t reject it.”
Reporter: “What did the governors tell you they’re worried about?”
Biden:”Well, they’re not. They didn’t tell me they were worried. But they thanked me for their cooperation they’re getting. They said they’ve gotten all that they need. They just want to know what we think is going to happen from here. They asked Dr. Fauci some more questions about everything from whether or not he thought he was going to have to move to test at home, I mean airflights or that kind of thing. But there was no there were no complaints, a lot of cooperation.”
