'Lack of testing is killing us!' Epidemiologist sounds alarm on CNN about worsening coronavirus disaster

An epidemiologist went on CNN Tuesday to sound the alarm about how completely unprepared the United States is to handle the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told CNN that American medical professionals' response to the virus is still being hampered by a shortage of testing kits.

Specifically, Marrazzo said that the lack of sufficient kits was also hurting supplies of needed medical equipment to combat the disease.

"This lack of diagnostic testing is really killing us," she said. "And the reason is, because when we have somebody come in who we think might have a good chance of infection, we immediately have to don the most protective personal protective equipment, the shield, all that sort of stuff. We can't stop using that equipment until we are sure that person doesn't have the infection. So when you prolong the time to get that result back, you're burning through a lot of that equipment."

She also hammered the Trump administration for being unwilling to say how many ventilators the United States has stockpiled at the moment.

"This is basic emergency preparedness and disaster planning," she said." and all you need to do is talk to our colleagues in Italy... they are making excruciating decisions about who to take off ventilators... So the fact that the authorities are not able to assure us that that won't happen here, I agree with you, is incredibly concerning."

Watch the video below.