Dr Birx downplays Trump’s dangerous coronavirus disinfectant remarks

Donald Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, has cautioned that social distancing measures are likely to stay in place throughout the summer, as the administration’s health expert sought to downplay the president’s dangerous suggestion that injected disinfectant and ultraviolet light could play a role in medical treatment of Covid-19.

Birx made a number of appearances on the Sunday morning TV news shows, where she was asked about Trump’s outlandish comments made at a White House briefing on Thursday, which prompted immediate backlash from medical experts and industrial manufacturers who cited the potentially fatal outcome of such a process. Trump has falsely claimed the comments were sarcastic.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Birx was asked if she was bothered by the fallout from the president’s remarks.

“It bothers me that this is still in the news cycle, because I think we’re missing the bigger pieces of what we need to be doing as an American people to continue to protect one another,” Birx said. “As a scientist and a public health official and a researcher, sometimes I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night.”

In a later appearance on NBC News, Birx also responded to a suggestion from the vice-president, Mike Pence, in which he claimed that the US would “largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us” by Memorial Day, on 25 May.

Birx said that while downward trends in infections and deaths in certain locations such as Houston and Detroit “gives us great hope”, she said “social distancing will be with us through the summer”.

She added that the US required a “breakthrough innovation in testing” to speed up the reopening, by testing for those who have already had coronavirus but displayed little to no symptoms, in order to track the virus’s spread.

The comments came as New York governor Andrew Cuomo said some less affected regions of the state could partially re-open when his statewide shelter in place order expires on 15 May. New York, the worst hit state in America, reported a drop in the number of deaths again on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s governor, the Republican Brian Kemp, has partially lifted social distancing guidelines, meaning restaurants will be allowed to reopen to the public on Monday with other businesses, including gyms and salons already allowed to re-open. The order has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans because of the state’s increasing infection rate and lack of testing.

Birx’s cautious wording underlined the difficulties faced by health experts working for the administration throughout the pandemic, who have attempted to balance sound scientific advice without directly contradicting haphazard and sometimes dangerous political rhetoric from political figures, including the president.

Trump’s promotion of injected disinfectant was only the latest example of reckless promotion of unfounded or potentially harmful medical advice during the pandemic. The president had previously touted an unproven antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, which the FDA has now ruled cannot be used outside of clinical trials or a hospital settings because of its potential cardiac risks.

On Sunday, Dr Birx told CNN she had “made it clear” to Trump that injected disinfectant “was not a treatment”, but added the president’s advocacy on the issue should be viewed as a “kind of dialogue will happen” between scientists and politicians.

Although Trump has not specified where the idea of using injected disinfectant as a possible remedy for Covid-19 came from, the Guardian revealed on Friday that a prominent group peddling the use of bleach as a “miracle cure” had written to the president earlier in the week.

Trump had also pushed the potential use of ultraviolet light on the body as a treatment for coronavirus, pushing research by the Department of Homeland Security exploring how heat and sunlight affect the virus on surfaces. Experts have also long cautioned against the dangerous, potentially lethal side effects of UV light on the human body.

Hogan: hundreds of hotline calls after Trump comments

On Sunday, Birx also sought to distance herself from the president’s suggestion, and instead cited research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that suggested sunlight can affect the aerosolization of the virus outdoors.

The back-and-forth comes as senior state Republicans showed signs of being more forceful in their criticism of Trump’s wild claims.

Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, told ABC News on Sunday that the state received “hundreds of calls come into our emergency hotline at our health department asking if it was right to ingest Clorox or alcohol cleaning products – whether that was going to help them fight the virus”.

The calls forced the governor to issue a warning against doing so.

“I think when misinformation comes out or you just say something that pops in your head, it does send a wrong message,” Hogan added, with reference to Trump’s press conferences.

Trump indicated over the weekend he could halt the daily press briefings that have underpinned his shambolic response to the pandemic, drawing widespread criticism for their similarity to campaign rallies rather than public health briefings.

“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,” he tweeted on Saturday at roughly the same time in the evening that the briefing would have taken place.

“They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”

There were no reports of a White House briefing on Sunday by the late afternoon.