Two White House officials blame the govenment's own scientists as well as pre-existing health conditions as causes of the US COVID-19 death toll.
On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that underlying health conditions, including among minorities, caused the increase in the death toll. The coronavirus outbreak in the US already killed around 90,000Â as of Sunday evening.
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Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, points the finger at the administration's own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the analysis of Stephen Collinson on CNN, Trump's administration has been redirecting the narrative of its own coronavirus response. White House officials blame its scientists as the administration pushes for the reopening of the country.
Collinson said this move is "a process vital to the fortunes of millions of people who have lost their jobs in lockdowns and its own political prospects in November."
Azar suggested that the inequities in the US health system, especially involving minorities, caused the rise in the US death toll. He noted that the administration had set a "historic result" in ensuring that the pandemic would not overwhelm the health care system.
"Unfortunately the American population is ... very diverse," Azar said during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union."
On the other hand, Navarro mentioned that CDC, headed by Dr. Robert Redfield, is responsible for the early failures on coronavirus testing. This reflects the tensions between the CDC and the White House.
"Early on in this crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space -- really let the country down with the testing," Navarro, a trade adviser drafted into the coronavirus effort, told NBC.
"Not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test and that set us back," Navarro said.
Big crowds
Meanwhile the President repeatedly pushed for the reopening of the country. His decision is at odds with the views of health experts and several governors.
"We want big, big stadiums loaded with people. We don't want to have 15,000 people watching Alabama-LSU, as an example," Trump said. Alabama-LSU is an upcoming college football game that attracts crowds.
"We want to have big crowds, and now, right now, that's not what they're planning, but you never know what happens. Things can happen very quickly, and we're looking at vaccines, we're looking at cures and we are very, very far down the line," the President said.
Trump also cites mass testing as the reason why the US recorded the most cases of COVID-19 in the world. "His claim is correct but does not take into account the fact that a number of countries have tested a higher proportion of their populations," Collinson wrote.
Other causes of death
"In almost half of our reporting counties, we have had not a single death," Azar told Tapper.
"Sixty-two percent of our Covid cases come in just 2% of the reporting counties in the United States. So, these are very localized determinations," Azar said.
"We know statistically, based on our experience with the China trade shock in the 2000s, that unemployment creates more suicides, depression and drug abuse," Navarro told NBC.
"But we also know this in this crisis, as we've basically locked down our hospitals for everything but COVID, women haven't been getting mammograms or cervical examinations for cancer. We haven't been able to do other procedures for the heart or the kidneys. And that's going to kill people as well."
