A airport worker wearing a face mask checks the temperature of a young passenger at terminal 2 Don Mueang airport on May 1, 2020 in Bangkok, Thailand.The White House reportedly plans to go ahead with a plan to institute temperature screenings at 20 US airports in order to instill confidence that air travel is safe, according toAccording to leaked emails, a top CDC official said that such a strategy was ineffective and asked that the agency be excluded from the plan.
Temperature checks do not account for asymptomatic COVID-19 cases, pre-symptomatic cases, or people with COVID-19. The report comes one day after an Associated Press report found that the White House had buried CDC guidance for re-opening businesses, schools, and churches.The Trump administration reportedly ignored guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over temperature screenings at airports and plans to go ahead with them, even though they were ineffective in initially preventing the spread of COVID-19 in the US.
The move, which would require temperature screenings at 20 US airports, was detailed in leaked documents reported byon Saturday. In an email to officials at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Martin Cetron, the director of global mitigation and quarantine at the CDC had argued "thermal scanning as proposed is a poorly designed control and detention strategy as we have learned very clearly.
"We should be concentrating our CDC resources where there is impact and a probability of mission success," he said, adding he wasn't even sure whether his agency had the legal authority to participate in the administration's effort.As USA Today noted, the DHS plan comes after the CDC had attempted to institute temperature screenings at airports earlier this year, which weren't successful in preventing the ongoing outbreak in the US.
Months late and still not up to scratch. TrumpVirus Covid19
People who have the virus may not have a temperature or any other symptoms.