While President Joe Biden works to implement a more robust set of strategies to deal with the coronavirus pandemic than those carried out during his predecessor’s term, national security adviser Jake Sullivan pointed to the deficiencies of the previous government that may have contributed the current severity of the outbreak.
“What I believe is that the Trump administration did not take pandemic surveillance as seriously as it should,” said the White House official on Sunday morning. Face the Nation, where he emphasized the importance of forecasting in comments to Margaret Brennan of CBS News.
“I think it is absolutely true, and we saw this at COVID-19, that pandemics represent one of the most serious threats to the lives and livelihoods of Americans,” said Sullivan to the program’s moderator. “And therefore, our intelligence community must, in general, elevate its tools, its resources, its practices to focus on the detection, prevention and response to pandemics.”
A comprehensive effort to take this step “is something that the Biden government will look for,” he continued. When asked whether the intelligence community has failed in this regard under Trump, Sullivan cited the former government’s decision to dissolve the Global Health and Bio-Defense Security team – created in 2015 during the presidency of Barack Obama with the express purpose of preparing for a pandemic .
“This is the kind of thing, the kind of step, that we cannot see in the future,” said Sullivan. “So whether we’re talking about the types of policy tools required, the types of intelligence tools required, or the type of involvement in international business institutions needed … it will be important for each future administration to elevate global health, biopreparation and preparedness. pandemic in the highest order of national security priority. “
The national security officer also shared brief comments on the origins of COVID-19. It is understood that the first reported cases of respiratory disease were identified in Wuhan, China during the end of 2019, and speculation has linked the emergence to a laboratory within the Wuhan Institute of Virology for some time.
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Theories about how the virus emerged were subject to conjecture during the course of the pandemic. In January, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the federal department “had reason to believe” that the virology institute researchers were ill with COVID-19 months before the documented cases suggested. The State Department released additional information about the allegations at the same time, while World Health Organization personnel initiated an investigation.
Sullivan told Brennan on Sunday that the Biden administration cannot confirm or deny reports that relate to the origins of COVID-19 until the formal investigation is completed.
“That is why the WHO investigation has to be left to the scientist and specialists to trace, without any interference from any government, because only then will we know what the origins of this are. I am not in a position to say how COVID-19 came into this world. All I am in a position to do is to call on WHO to do its job as far as possible. “
Newsweek contacted the White House and Trump’s office for comment, but received no response in time for publication.