It is pretty widely agreed upon that the Trump administration’s coronavirus pandemic response has been less than satisfactory. Besides being the pandemic being called a hoax and Trump himself suggesting people just stop getting tested, the current White House Health Secretary is now claiming that healthcare workers “don’t get infected” with COVID-19.
While making a case for reopening schools in the fall at a White House event on Tuesday, Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services Secretary for the Trump administration, made the inaccurate statements regarding COVID-19 cases among healthcare workers. "There's no reason we can't do any of this," Azar, a former big pharma lobbyist and executive, said during a White House event. "We have healthcare settings. We have healthcare workers, they don't get infected because they take appropriate precautions. They engage in social distancing, they wear facial covering, they use good personal hygiene. This can work, you can do all of this. There's no reason schools have to be in any way any different."
Not only is Azar’s claim that healthcare workers do not get infected completely false but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 94,000 healthcare workers have contracted COVID-19 and at least 500 have died.
Medical professionals debunked Azar’s argument that the same precautionary principles taken in healthcare settings can easily be replicated in schools. Prasad Jallepalli, MD, a professor at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center tweeted, “We are trained in infection control and have used [personal protective equipment] for years. This is almost as dumb as the 'give teachers guns' proposal.”
Watch Azar’s remarks below.
In other Trump news, the 2020 presidential candidate is allegedly considering dropping out of the race as his polling numbers continue to dip.