The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should have updated its guidelines on cleaning household surfaces well before this week, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health said Tuesday.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Dr. Ashish Jha said on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”. “I think I started saying in April and last May, a lot of us in public health, we stop cleaning surfaces.”
“I don’t really understand how long it took the CDC to make it clear in reality. This virus spreads through the air,” Jha said.
The CDC said Monday that a full scrub with soap and water is adequate to prevent Covid-19 from spreading in the home. However, the use of disinfectants is recommended in interior design schools and in homes where a case of virus has been suspected or confirmed within 24 hours.
“In most situations, regular cleaning of surfaces with soap and detergent, which does not necessarily disinfect these surfaces, is sufficient to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, at a White House briefing Monday.
Jha noted that the CDC’s public health messages have been part of a broader pattern of poor government messages regarding Covid.
“I would say the first couple of months are confusing, but in April, May of last year, it was very clear that this was air,” Jha said. “It’s been frustrating that this hasn’t always come out of our federal officials constantly.”
The CDC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Host Shepard Smith also asked Jha about the highly contagious variant B.1.1.7 after Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, warned on Sunday that the variant could infect children more easily than previous strains.
Jha said he is “concerned” about variant B.1.1.7 in children, mostly because they have not yet been vaccinated.
“We are not seeing many infections in the elderly because we vaccinate them, and this makes young people and children vulnerable to B.1.1.7,” Jha noted. “One of the reasons we can’t relax completely now is that we need to really reduce those infection numbers.”
All states in the country have reported at least one case of variant B.1.1.7 that was first detected in the UK, according to CDC data. Walensky said Wednesday that the variant is becoming the predominant Covid strain in many U.S. regions.