Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, attributed the soaring number of deaths from COVID-19 in the US to a lagging response during a live interview on CNN on Thursday.

The Manhattan bridge is seen in the background of a flashing sign urging commuters to avoid gatherings, reduce crowding and to wash hands in the Brooklyn borough of New York, on Thursday, March 19, 2020. (Photo: AP)

“We acted late,” Gupta said in response to the host of CNN’s “The Lead” show, Jake Tapper’s question on why the US has more coronavirus cases and deaths than many other countries.

Gupta said the virus was circulating robustly due to inadequate testing, putting communities across the country at a higher risk for infection.

“We are doing a lot of tests here but they are not uniformly-distributed. And the bulk of this testing has come about recently,” he said. “You wanted that to happen early and uniformly, but we didn’t have that.”

As of Friday BJT, the US has confirmed a total of 469,182 cases of coronavirus, with the death toll mounting to 16,708, according to the 1Point3Acres coronavirus tracker.