Just days after walking back President Trump's comments about "slowing down" coronavirus testing at a rally in Tulsa, the White House now plans to end funding for coronavirus testing sites in several states as the virus continues to ravage parts of the country, according to reports from CNN and Talking Points Memo.
U.S. President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One in ... [+] 
The White House had initially planned to end funding to the sites in April by "transitioning to state-managed sites," but reversed the plan after receiving bipartisan pushback from Congress.
"Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding," Trump tweeted on Tuesday. "With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!"
Rocky Vaz, Dallas' director of emergency management, told Talking Points Memo that the White House "told us very clearly that they are not going to extend it," but that cases are on the rise in Dallas and that they "want to continue with the testing." A health official in the Philadelphia suburbs called their site "very successful" in April, adding that it provides supplies that the county would not be able to acquire on its own.
The White House has also been criticized by Senate Democrats for nearly $14 billion in undistributed funds allocated for testing and tracing months earlier. In a letter, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) alleged that the Department of Health and Human Services has spent just $10.8 million of $2 billion set aside for free testing for the uninsured.
34,700. The U.S. had its third highest number of new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, with 34,700 cases reported, according to the Associated Press.
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