Dr. Desai Trends After Lambasting Trump Admin's 'Weak Response' to Coronavirus Pandemic on Fox News

A doctor was praised after he criticized the government's "very weak response" to the coronavirus outbreak during an appearance on Fox News.

Dr. Rishi Desai, chief medical officer at Osmosis, could be seen continually shaking his head as Fox News host Martha MacCallum mentions how there are meant to be millions of COVID-19 tests available in the U.S to help deal with the outbreak.

MacCallum added that the country is still waiting to fully roll out the Abbott Lab testing kit, a quick blood test which can give a diagnosis in minutes.

"But they're working on it," MacCallum said.

"They should have been working on it for months," Desai said.

Desai asks why President Donald Trump's administration is only acting now on these testing systems when the World Health Organization officially issued a warning about COVID-19 on December 31, 2019 after the virus had broken out in China.

"So last year we knew about this, we knew coronavirus was coming, we knew it was a respiratory disease, we knew it was person to person," Desai said.

"Why is it that it was this week that the FDA finally approved these new Abbott Lab testing, which by the way is one test at a time.

"This is a wonderful test, don't get me wrong, but it's one test per 15 minutes. That's wonderful, but it's not the same volume that you really need. This is better for outpatient clinics and things like that.

"We needed this months ago."

Desai adds that it is clear how badly the U.S. has responded to the virus when compared to South Korea. Both countries reported their first case of the coronavirus on the same day of January 19.

Since then, the U.S. has become the country with the most confirmed cases in the entire world with more than 216,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In the same time South Korea has recorded less than 10,000 cases after rapidly implementing coordinated mass testings. The country has also recorded 169 fatalities from COVID-19, compared to 5,137 in the U.S.

"Look at what South Korea did and what we did. Their population is one sixth of ours, look at the cases they have, look at the mortality they have," Desai said.

"It's a trifle compared to what we are dealing with right now, because we've had a very weak response and they've had a really strong response."

MacCallum then pauses for several moments before ending the interview.

After a clip of the interview was posted on social media, tens of thousands of people praised the doctor for his response, as well as criticizing Fox for their coverage of the pandemic, helping Desai become one of the top trending topics on Twitter.

"Share this Fox News clip of Dr. Desai with every person who still doesn't understand how the WH's total failure in testing is why we are here," wrote Virginia congressional hopeful Qasim Rashid.

"Here's a rare moment when actual reality collides with the alternate universe that is fox 'news.' Dr. Desai with no tolerance for lies," added author James Michael Sama. "Now if only the audience would listen."

Fellow author and podcast host Arnab Ray wrote: "Trump's pet network should be firing their booking agent for inviting Dr Rishi Desai. What Covid19 is to people's lungs, the truth is to Fox News."

Elsewhere in the interview, Desai also urged a full, mandated nationwide lockdown in order to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.

"Let me tell you something that you and your viewers might find inspiring: If we did do this shutdown, if we shutdown rails and airlines and did it the way I'm suggesting and really kind of policed it...We would see a drop off in cases within two weeks," he said.

"Within two weeks, the number of cases would start to fall, and the entire country would breathe a sigh of relief.

"But we're not doing that," he added. "We're just going to see the cases continuously arise expeditiously and we're kind of panicking about the Dow Jones, but the truth is if we just did this for a consistent period of time, just a couple of weeks, you'd see the number of cases fall off."

The FDA has been contacted for comment.

There are more than 956,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the world, with 48,583 deaths. More than 202,000 people have managed to recover from the virus.

The map below, provided by Statista, shows the global spread of COVID-19 cases as of April 2.