CDC testing guidance published against objections of scientists

A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about who should be tested for the coronavirus was not written by CDC scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections, according to several people familiar with the matter as well as internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

The guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of COVID- 19 even if they had been exposed to the virus. It came at a time when public health experts were pushing for more testing rather than less, and administration officials told The Times that the document was a CDC product and had been revised with input from the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield.

But officials told The Times this week that the Department of Health and Human Services did the rewriting and “dropped” it into the CDC’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process.

“That was a doc that came from the top down, from the HHS and the task force,” said a federal official with knowledge of the matter, referring to the White House task force on the coronavirus. “That policy does not reflect what many people at the CDC feel should be the policy.”

The document contains “elementary errors” — such as referring to “testing for COVID- 19,” as opposed to testing for the virus that causes it — and recommendations inconsistent with the CDC’s stance that mark it to anyone in the know as not having been written by agency scientists, according to a senior CDC scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of repercussions.

Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s testing coordinator and an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent organization, said in an interview Thursday that the original draft came from the CDC but that he “coordinated editing and input from the scientific and medical members of the task force.”

Over a period of a month, he said, the draft went through about 20 versions, with comments from Redfield; top members of the White House task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx; and Dr. Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump’s adviser on the coronavirus. The members also presented the document to Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the task force, Giroir said.

He said he did not know why the recommendation circumvented the usual CDC scientific review. “I think you have to ask Dr. Redfield about that. That certainly was not any direction from me whatsoever,” he said.

Redfield could not be reached for comment.