West Virginia didn't remain immune to coronavirus until this week because it was doing anything special, but because there were no tests available for the highly contagious virus, Sen. Joe Manchin said Wednesday.
“I was hoping the president would not go down that road and make it seem like we’re doing something special,” the West Virginia Democrat told CNN's "New Day." "What they did (was) they didn't test. Up until a couple of days ago, we only had 40 tests done. Now I think we're at 130 or so. But with that being said, we have no testing and we're not prepared."
West Virginia confirmed Tuesday night that its first case of the virus had been confirmed. President Donald Trump for several days had been pointing at the state for some time because it was the last state in the country to report a case of the virus.
Manchin said West Virginia has a high population of elderly people who suffer from serious medical conditions such as diabetes or respiratory illnesses that make them vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.
“I knew if we weren’t prepared, if people got lulled into a false sense of security, we were going to get harmed," said Manchin. "I thought it was just carnage waiting to happen, and I wanted to make sure people didn’t get a false sense of security.”
Meanwhile, Manchin said he does not support a push to send checks to people who are out of work after the businesses where they work, such as bars and restaurants, were ordered to close, but instead, he believes unemployment benefits should be extended.
"Just throwing money out for the sake of throwing money out thinking that’s going to fix it — if you don’t have a system there that monitors that, you’re going to be in trouble in the long run," said the senator.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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