A U.S. House of Representatives panel reports that the Trump administration sought to suppress COVID-19 testing in the United States last year by softening guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who needed to be tested.
In August, the CDC revised its COVID-19 testing guidance to say that people who don’t have symptoms "do not necessarily need a test" even if they were exposed to an infected person. The move was widely criticized by public health specialists and politicians, who said testing asymptomatic people is an important part of identifying and cutting off chains of spread.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on Monday released newly obtained emails from a political appointee within the Department of Health and Human Services that indicate he pushed for the new guidance.
In the emails, former Health and Human Services scientific advisor Paul Alexander defended the change in testing policy and downplayed the importance of testing people without symptoms, saying it "is not the point of testing." Alexander was brought into HHS by Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally who led HHS communications last year before departing abruptly after he accused CDC scientists of sedition.
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