White House and CDC are at odds on airports, administration pushes for fever screenings.
Administration pushes for fever screenings
The White House is pushing a return to its failed experiment in relying on temperature screening of air travelers to detect the new coronavirus despite vehement objections from the nation’s top public health agency, internal documents obtained by USA TODAY show.
The discord underscores the administration’s disregard for science and the diminished standing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a moment when local governments, businesses and community leaders are seeking direction on how to reopen safely.
Recent emails showed CDC scientists, who have begun owning up to initial missteps in the federal response, trying to persuade the administration to reconsider.
The White House directive to check travelers in 20 U.S. airports for fever comes after earlier efforts by the CDC to screen travelers returning from China failed to stop the global pandemic from reaching the United States.
“Thermal scanning as proposed is a poorly designed control and detection strategy as we have learned very clearly,” Dr. Martin Cetron, the CDC’S director of global mitigation and quarantine, wrote in an email to Department of Homeland Security officials on Thursday. “We should be concentrating our CDC resources where there is impact and a probability of mission success.”
Cetron questioned his agency’s legal authority to execute the airport plan, ending the email: “Please kindly strike out CDC from this role.”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows pressed ahead anyway, directing the DHS to announce the airport screenings, which would be visible and instill confidence in travelers, according to meeting notes.
Passengers with fever, Meadows said, would be referred to the CDC for clearance. The full plan has not yet been completed.
The exchange follows two weeks of internal skirmishes between the CDC and the Office of Management and Budget over how to safely reopen the nation’s schools, restaurants and churches.
Separate emails show the public health agency’s recommendations that bars install sneeze shields and teachers space student desks six feet apart were dismissed as overly prescriptive.
As a result, detailed plans – which CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield personally approved – have idled in administration officials’ email inboxes since late April. The Associated Press has reported on the draft guidelines since last Tuesday, but an official plan has not been released.
CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes said the CDC is revising its reopening guidance, based on White House feedback, but did not address the records that show the agency sparring with administration officials over the airport screenings, referring questions to the White House.