The panel describes how Trump-appointed people tried to take over the Health Department’s weekly scientific journal.
Washington:
Former US President Donald Trump’s administration barred health officials from providing accurate information about COVID-19 to support their overly optimistic view of the outbreak, according to a congressional report released on Monday.
Senior staff at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told investigators that Trump aides bullied staff and tried to rewrite their reports to align guidance with the president’s public outcry of the crisis. Of.
The report said that officials “took unprecedented steps to incorporate political appointments into the publication process and to refute CDC’s scientific reports, including drafting op-eds and designs designed to directly contradict CDC’s findings.” other public messages made.”
Investigators interviewed a dozen current and former CDC officials, as well as senior administration figures, for a 91-page document released by the House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.
The panel describes how Trump’s appointment to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tried to handle the CDC’s weekly scientific journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), by editing or blocking articles they believed That could prove detrimental to Trump.
The Trump appointees had sought to “change, refute, or delay the release” of the 18 MMWR and a health warning on at least five occasions to succeed.
The report quoted a CDC communications official as saying that a Trump aide at HHS used “bullying behavior” that made CDC officials “feel threatened.”
Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director of infectious diseases, said he “wasn’t actually asked back to telebriefing” after his statements were deemed “too dangerous.”
Panel chairman Jim Clyburn, a Democrat, said: “The selection subcommittee’s investigation has revealed that the previous administration had engaged in an unprecedented campaign of political interference in the federal government’s pandemic response, designed to benefit the former president’s political goals. undermined public health.” Statement.
As today’s report shows, President Trump and his top aides repeatedly attacked CDC scientists, compromised the agency’s public health guidance, and suppressed scientific reports in an effort to downplay the severity of the coronavirus. Gave.”
A previous report outlined the Trump administration’s bid to prevent government health officials from speaking publicly about the pandemic.
And another described its pressure on the US Food and Drug Administration to reissue emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug Trump was promoting despite being ineffective in treating COVID-19.
Republicans dismissed the latest report as partisan and vowed to conduct their own investigation if they win back the House or Senate in November’s midterm elections.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)