White House pushes to restart airport fever screenings for COVID-19 despite CDC scientists' objections
The White House is pushing a return to its failed experiment in relying on temperature screening of air travelers to detect coronavirus despite vehement objections from the nation's top public health agency, internal documents obtained by USA TODAY show.
“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.”
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. CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes said in a statement that Redfield has had a seat at the table throughout the crisis. He said the CDC never cleared the reopening instructions it wanted to issue, and that standardized guidance would be inappropriate across all states. Deere did not answer questions about the airport screening proposal.
The head of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services sent an alarmed letter to Redfield on Feb. 11. Viral genetic sequencing now suggests a link from the first case detected in late January in Washington state, involving a man who had traveled to China, to a chain of some 300 infections, although numbers vary widely.
“The virus could have spread from this case, despite the thorough investigation and response,” the CDC memo notes, adding a concerning conclusion for a country facing a likely second wave of the virus: The origin of the Washington cluster “will probably always be unknown.”
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