Birx says there was no full-time team working on COVID response in Trump
White House

Washington � Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response
coordinator under former President Donald Trump, revealed that she had no
full-time team in the White House working on the response to COVID-19
under the former president.

In an interview with "Face the Nation" that aired Sunday, Birx said that
she was "an N of 1" during her tenure in the White House as the
coronavirus response coordinator. In contrast, she praised President Joe
Biden for building a team of experts in testing, vaccines, data and data
use, as well as a full-time supply chain point-person. During the Trump
administration, those individuals existed "in different pockets of
government," Birx said.

"There was no team, full-time team in the White House working on
coronavirus," she told "Face the Nation," adding that she did ask for more
staff. Birx noted she had "one incredible support person" named Tyler Ann
McGuffee who helped make sure that she was at meetings on time and did not
miss emails.

Highlights from the "Face the Nation" interview with Birx
Transcript: Dr. Deborah Birx on "Face the Nation"

Birx, a former U.S. Army colonel and adviser at the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), said the Trump administration's structure
meant that she was the "only full-time person in the White House working
on the coronavirus response."

"That's what I was given," she said. "So what I did is, I went to my
people that I've known all through the last years in government, all 41,
and said, can you come and help me? And so I was able to recruit from
other agencies, individuals."

Among those she recruited was Irum Zaidi, who worked with Birx on the
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

A senior adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, who led the White
House coronavirus task force, confirmed to CBS News that the staff who
worked with Birx were from her days with PEPFAR, and that she put together
that team. However, the adviser disputed the premise that Birx was denied
necessary staff.

"There were 7-8 full-time staff detailed from other agencies to her. They
were paid," the senior adviser told CBS News. Pence, meanwhile, was also
given no additional White House staff, and his existing team worked on the
COVID-19 response.

There have been nearly 25 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in
the U.S. and more than 417,000 Americans have died from COVID-19,
according to Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Biden has warned the outbreak
will get worse before it improves, and has made combatting the coronavirus
his top priority.

On his first full day in office, Mr. Biden rolled out a national strategy
for fighting the coronavirus and used his executive authority to boost
production of vaccines, testing supplies and personal protective
equipment.

Birx stressed that for the new administration, having a team at the White
House to respond to the ongoing pandemic "is going to be really, really
important."

"The amount of work that needs to be done not only at the White House but
also at the state level to really ensure that we come out of this in some
kind of normalcy by summer will be really critical," she said.

Part of the new administration's success, she said, will be bringing
together experts in testing, vaccines, data and data use, and supply chain
management.

Birx spent much of 2020 on the road meeting with state and local leaders
and said she and Zaidi wanted to determine what federal support states
needed, as well as how they were interpreting guidance from the CDC. In
private, Birx encouraged governors to disregard Mr. Trump's dismissiveness
of mask-wearing and his pressure to reopen the economy faster than federal
health guidelines would permit.

"That was the place where people would let me say what needed to be said
about the pandemic, both in private with the governors and then in
following up, doing press to talk to the people of that state," she said.

Birx said that she felt her science-based guidance was being censored by
the White House and that she was being deliberately blocked from appearing
on national media outlets for a time. By driving herself cross-country to
meet face-to-face with governors, Birx said she could deliver her guidance
and also understand why local leaders might be disregarding it.

As for whether Pence was aware of Birx's conversations with governors, the
senior adviser to the former vice president told CBS News "he was
supportive of the process but did not have a great level of detail."

Birx provided Pence's staff with regular reports, though the senior
adviser said he may not have read them all and did not sign off on them.
The adviser disputed the premise of censorship, pointing out that her
written reports to governors were cleared through the Office of
Intergovernmental Affairs prior to publication.
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And what "team" WAS in place - lyin' Fauchi in the captains chair ...