28, 2020, United States Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden wrote Azar to ask why employees of the HHS Administration for Children and Families were involuntarily dispatched to California to meet with quarantined travelers despite lacking expertise in the field and lacking proper information, equipment, and training. Wyden also asked why said employees were not cleared to ensure that they had not become carriers of the disease before they were returned to their home stations. On April 25, 2020, multiple media outlets reported that the White House was weighing a plan to oust Azar due to frustrations over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The following day, President Trump tweeted that such reports were "Fake News" and that he has no plans to replace Azar. Azar picked Brian Harrison, a 37-year old former Labradoodle breeder who had no formal education in public health or related fields, but who had worked in the HHS for six years, as HHS's main coordinator for the government's response to the coronavirus. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention As secretary of Health and Human Services, Azar was responsible for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a key institution in charge of containing contagious diseases. On January 28, 2020, Azar requested that the Chinese government allow a CDC expert team into their country to help them learn more about the virus. Referring to the SARS epidemic 17 years earlier, Azar said, "I can say that the posture of the Chinese government levels of cooperation and interaction with us is completely different from what we experienced in 2003 and I want to commend them for such assistance." The World Health Organization had already agreed to supply international experts to visit China "as soon as possible". Seventy-three possible cases were being monitored in the U.S. Simultaneously, the CDC had ramped up coronavirus screenings of travelers coming into the U.S. at 20 airports. Azar said it might be possible to ban any travelers arriving from China, and all options had to be considered. "Diseases are not terribly good at respecting borders", he added. Congressional testimony and requests for funding On February 25, 2020, Azar appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to testify on the danger of and responses to the pandemic. Louisiana Republican senator John Kennedy asked both Azar and Chad Wolf about the fatality rate in victims. Azar said that the fatality rate of seasonal