Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has acknowledged that the lack of testing nationwide early in the novel coronavirus outbreak was the chief blunder that allowed the virus to spread rapidly.

“(February was) the critical the time frame when we could have done more to mitigate the spread and not have gotten ourselves into the situation in March that we had to then reach for the stay-at-home orders, which had the devastating impact on the economy,” he said Friday during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Gottlieb, who also worked at the FDA under former President George W. Bush, went onto assert that the reason why wide-ranging lockdown orders went into effect was because “back in February and March, we had no idea where the virus was and was not spreading because we didn’t have diagnostic testing.”

He later added: “When history looks back on this, the lack of situational awareness at that time is going to be remembered as the great failing.”

Many health officials and medical experts are in agreement that lockdowns were effective in limiting the spread of the coronavirus. One particular study from the University of California at Berkeley estimated that such measures likely prevented nearly five million infections in the United States.

“We absolutely had to shut down New York City and do what we did in New York City and probably did a little too late,” Gottlieb said.

“The health-care system in New York—the biggest, largest, best health-care system in the world—was literally on the brink of collapse.”

The entire state of New York had less than 800 confirmed cases when New York City in mid-March decided to order restaurants, bars, and schools to close.

Gottlieb wondered if other major cities could have followed New York City’s example sooner.

“We probably had to implement a stay-at-home order in cities like (New Orleans), Detroit, maybe Chicago. Did we have to do it in Dallas? Probably not. Did we have to do it at that time in Miami? Probably not,” he said.

“We had to assume that it was spreading far more widely in the United States, at that point in time, than it was.”

Gottlieb’s comments come as the United States’ early efforts to combat the pandemic are under renewed scrutiny after it was revealed that President Donald Trump acknowledged the dangers of the coronavirus in a February interview with journalist Bob Woodward and then downplayed the threat soon after so that he wouldn’t “create a panic.”

Trump told Woodward that he understood the virus to be “more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.