The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told lawmakers Tuesday there’s not enough staff and equipment in state and local labs — as he revealed that around 4,900 Americans have been tested for coronavirus through public labs.

“The truth is we’ve not invested, we’ve underinvested in the public health labs,” Dr. Robert Redfield told lawmakers on Capitol Hill, CNN reported.

His comments came Tuesday during a House Appropriations Committee hearing to approve the agency’s 2021 budget.

Redfield added that there’s no “surge capacity” in local labs, as the number of coronavirus cases in the country climbed past 700.

“There’s not enough equipment, there’s not enough people, there’s not enough internal capacity, there’s no surge capacity,” Redfield said.

Redfield said 4,856 people had been tested for the virus as of Monday in public labs, but that figure doesn’t include tests completed by clinical or private labs.

But he noted that two private companies, Laboratory Corp of America and Quest Diagnostics, have enough tests available that any doctor’s office who uses those firms can have their patients evaluated.

The CDC is working on a system to track those tests that should be available soon, he said.

“We’re going to get direct dumps from LabCorp and Quest so people are going to see all the tests done, where they are done. We will have a surveillance system that does that,” Redfield said, according to CNN.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said earlier Tuesday that his department did not know the number of Americans who have been tested for coronavirus because private labs and hospitals weren’t reporting the figures to the CDC.

The hearing comes as the virus has spread to least 36 states with clusters in Washington state, California and New York.

With Post wires