Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump listens during the daily briefing of the coronavirus working group at the White House on April 22, 2020 at Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images
The Trump administration tried to suppress Covid-19 testing in the United States last year by softening guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who should be tested, a House group said Monday.
In August, the CDC revised its guidelines on Covid-19 testing to say that people who do not show symptoms “do not necessarily need a test” even if they are exposed to an infected person. The move was widely criticized by public health specialists and politicians, who said testing asymptomatic people is an important part of identifying and cutting propagation chains.
The Deputy Secretary of Health, the adm. Brett Giroir, who led the Trump administration’s testing effort, strongly denied allegations that the White House was pressuring health officials to change the guidelines.
But on Monday the subcommittee of the Selective Chamber of the Coronavirus Crisis released emails recently obtained by a politician appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that it pushed the new direction.
In emails, former HHS scientific advisor Paul Alexander defended the change in testing policy and downplayed the importance of testing people without symptoms, saying “it’s not the point to test.” Michael Caputo, a longtime ally of Trump who led the department’s communications last year, took Alexander to HHS before abruptly leaving after accusing CDC scientists of sedition.
“Testing asymptomatic people to look for asymptomatic cases is not the test point, because in the end all that is achieved is to end up quarantining low-risk asymptomatic people and preventing the workforce from working,” Alexander wrote one day after the change to CDC. the test guide was reported in an email to other HHS officials.
“In that sense, it would not be reasonable based on the prevailing data to have widespread testing in schools and universities. This will not allow them to reopen optimally,” he added, advocating policy change.
In September, the CDC quietly reversed the guidelines, saying anyone, even those without symptoms, who has been in close contact with an infected person needs a Covid-19 test.
Representative James Clyburn, DS.C., chairman of the committee that has been investigating allegations of political influence in the nation’s top health agencies under the Trump administration, said in letters seen by CNBC to the chief of staff of White House Ron Klain and HHS interim secretary Norris Cochran say the emails are further evidence of political interference at CDC under Trump.
The email, Clyburn said in the letters, “shows that the designated politicians were involved in the decision to change the CDC guidelines and that the Trump Administration changed the guidelines for the explicit purpose of reducing evidence and allowing the virus spreads as the economy quickly reopened. “
Clyburn added that the committee has requested more documents from the CDC and other agencies “to understand the scope and full impact of Trump’s White House efforts to suppress coronavirus testing.”
Alexander is at the center of ongoing research into whether the administration of President Donald Trump or his designees allowed politics to shape the nation’s response to the pandemic. In December, Clyburn released a large number of emails from Alexander and Caputo that showed “a pernicious pattern of political interference by administration officials,” according to Clyburn.