(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump blamed his predecessor Barack Obama for a nationwide shortage of test kits for the novel coronavirus, saying he had ended regulations limiting the development of the diagnostic tools.

“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion,” Trump said at a meeting with airline executives at the White House on Wednesday.

He added: “That was a decision we disagreed with -- I don’t think we would have made it -- but for some reason it was made but we’ve undone that decision.”

Local government officials have complained that test kits to determine whether people are infected with the virus have been in short supply because the federal government was unprepared for the outbreak. San Francisco’s mayor called the shortage of kits “a national disgrace” in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday.

Asked to explain his remarks, Trump referred the question to Pence and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield.

Pence said that because of a Trump order over the weekend, states can now conduct coronavirus testing in state and university laboratories.

Redfield said that private laboratories used to be able to develop clinical tests and apply them, but “in the previous administration that became regulated. For someone to do that they had to file with the FDA.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Saturday cleared the way for some laboratories to conduct diagnostic tests on the coronavirus before an emergency process is fully approved. For a period of time while labs submit formal applications, the FDA does not intend to object to the tests for specimen testing, according to a statement.

Redfield said that thanks to Trump’s order, “University labs and others can be fully engaged in developing diagnostics.”

“It was something we had to do and we did it very quickly,” Trump said. He said “many, many more sites” and “many, many more people” will be able to be tested.

“You couldn’t have that under the Obama rule and we ended that rule very quickly,” he said.

(Updates with FDA measure in eighth paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu

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