Trump administration wrote controversial US agency guidelines on testing, says report
Follow UsStory highlights
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the guidelines, which said testing was not necessary for people who were exposed to Covid-19 but not displaying symptoms, were criticised when they were issued last month.
The Trump administration posted controversial recommendations on coronavirus testing to the US health agency's website against its objections, according to a media report.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the guidelines, which said testing was not necessary for people who were exposed to Covid-19 but not displaying symptoms, were criticised when they were issued last month.
That is because healthcare experts at the time were pushing for more, not less, testing to help track and control the spread of COVID-19.
The respiratory disease has now killed almost 200,000 people in the United States.
The newspaper said the recommendation was posted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website "despite their serious objections," citing internal CDC documents.
"The Department of Health and Human Services did the rewriting and then 'dropped' it into the CDC's public website, flouting the agency's strict scientific review process," the newspaper said.
A federal official told the paper that the document came from the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, and from the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
The Times said healthcare experts at the CDC had "serious objections" to the document, and noted that it contained "elementary errors" as well as recommendations "inconsistent" with the CDC's advice, making it obvious it came from elsewhere, a senior CDC scientist told the paper under condition of anonymity.