Washington, May 18 (RHC)-- The Donald Trump administration rebuked the top U.S. health agency, saying "it let the country down" on providing testing crucial to the battle against the coronavirus outbreak.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Atlanta, Georgia, has been under intense scrutiny since producing a faulty test for COVID-19 that caused weeks of delays in the U.S. response.

Critics have pointed out it could simply have accepted testing kits made by the World Health Organization, which has been producing them since late January, instead of insisting on developing its own.

"Early on in this crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space, really let the country down with the testing," White House official Peter Navarro told NBC.  "Because not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test.  And that did set us back."