The White House moved today to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearance with the office of Vice President Mike Pence.
Pence does not have a health or medical professional background, and does not have any expertise in the area.
However, Trump announced that Pence would coordinate the government’s response to the public health threat even as he played down the immediate danger from the virus that is spreading rapidly across the globe.
Trump has been worried that the growing virus could affect his reelection chances this November.
Pence has selected Dr. DeborahBirx, the director of the United States effort to combat H.I.V. and AIDS, to serve as the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House, enlisting an experienced scientist and physician to manage the response to the potential spread of the virus.
Birx becomes the third person to be designated as the administration’s primary coronavirus official.
Trump said that “Mike is going to be in charge, and Mike will report back to me.”
Pence said it will be Birx.
Meanwhile, Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, remains the chairman of the government’s coronavirus task force.
The vice president’s first move appeared to be aimed at preventing the kind of contradictory statements from White House officials and top government health officials that have plagued the administration’s response.
Even during his news conference on Wednesday, Trump rejected the assessment from a top health official that it was inevitable that the coronavirus would spread more broadly inside the United States.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the country’s leading experts on viruses and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance.
The new White House approach came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged today that a California woman with coronavirus was made to wait days before she was tested for the disease because of the agency’s restrictive criteria about who may get tested.
And despite Trump’s efforts to calm the nation’s jittery investors, stock markets plunged again this morning, opening about 2 percent lower amid concerns about the potential effects of the virus on the global economy.
Earlier, European and Japanese stocks fell as well, closing more than 2 percent lower.
Trump’s decision to appoint Pence to lead the coronavirus response came after several days in which his aides grappled with whether to name a “coronavirus czar” to coordinate the alphabet soup of federal health and security agencies that have roles to play in protecting the country.
Trump said at his news conference that he was pleased with Mr. Azar’s performance, calling the team that he has led “totally brilliant.”
But White House aides, led by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, have been debating for days whether the administration needed a point person to be the face of the response.
The decision to put Pence in charge was made on Wednesday after Trump told some people that the vice president didn’t “have anything else to do,” according to people familiar with the president’s comments.
Goldman Sachs is warning Wall Street that the coronavirus could cost Trump the election.
The potential political fallout from the coronavirus adds yet more uncertainty for investors trying to assess the impact of the fast-moving epidemic.
“If the coronavirus epidemic materially affects US economic growth it may increase the likelihood of Democratic victory in the 2020 election,” Goldman Sachs analysts led by Ben Snider wrote in a report published Wednesday night.