WASHINGTON, July 16 (Xinhua) -- The governor of the U.S. state of Maryland, a Republican, has slammed President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic as "hopeless," contrasting the federal response to that of his own state, which he said was the best he could do.

"This should not have been necessary," Governor Larry Hogan wrote in an article published in The Washington Post on Thursday. "I'd watched as the president downplayed the outbreak's severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals."

"Eventually, it was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation's response was hopeless; if we delayed any longer, we'd be condemning more of our citizens to suffering and death," he wrote.

Questioning why Trump as a Republican president didn't help him, a GOP governor, with testing, Hogan began the article by chronicling the effort by him and his wife Yumi Hogan, who was born and raised in South Korea, to secure 500,000 test kits for Maryland from Seoul.

He also detailed how the Maryland National Guard and the Maryland State Police escorted and protected the test gear, noting that the Trump administration "had recently seized 3 million N95 masks purchased by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker."

"We weren't going to let Washington stop us from helping Marylanders," Hogan said.

"So many nationwide actions could have been taken in those early days but weren't," the governor lamented. "Meanwhile, instead of listening to his own public health experts, the president was talking and tweeting like a man more concerned about boosting the stock market or his reelection plans."

Responding to Hogan's scathing criticism of Trump and his administration, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called Hogan's article "revisionist history" at a press briefing on Thursday.

"It's really striking, his comments, especially when you compare them to his past comments," McEnany said. "This is revisionist history by Gov. Hogan and it stands in stark contrast to what he said on March 19 where he praised the great communication that the President has had with governors."

Adjacent to Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, Maryland has managed the virus outbreak comparatively well, with Thursday adding 648 new cases to bring the tally to 75,664. The death toll stood at 3,215 after an additional six fatalities were reported Thursday, according to the Maryland Department of Health.

In the meantime, the state's seven-day average of positivity rate, a ratio of positive COVID-19 tests to all tests, has been below 5 percent since late June, meeting the recommended threshold for reopening.