President Donald Trump Donald Trump of the United States on Thursday pushed for schools to reopen, sharply disagreeing with a top public health expert Anthony Fauci, who had warned against students returning too soon.
The president has been eager to reopen schools and businesses to restart the economy as soon as possible and has often clashed with the guidance of health officials.
“We have to get the schools open, we have to get our country open,” countered President Trump in an interview broadcast by Fox Business. “I totally disagree with him on schools,” the president said of Fauci’s words of caution at a Senate hearing.
Fauci told the senators there would have to be a “step-by-step” assessment of whether the dynamics of the outbreak would be right for schools to reopen in the autumn. He noted no vaccine would be available for use by then.
The infectious disease expert, who is one of the most prominent faces on Trump’s coronavirus task force, also warned of the dangers to children of a virus that doctors are still struggling to understand.
“I think we better be careful [that] we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune from the deleterious effects,” he had told the hearing, pointing to cases of a dangerous inflammatory syndrome in very young coronavirus patients.
Trump downplayed the risks of the virus to children in the interview.
“I think we have to open our schools, young people are very little affected by this,” he said.
On Wednesday, Trump had criticized Fauci’s congressional testimony as lacking “an acceptable answer”.
(dpa/NAN.