Fauci worried new adviser Atlas giving bad information to Trump

Two senior U.S. public health experts have raised concerns that White House adviser Scott Atlas is providing misleading or incorrect information on the coronavirus pandemic to President Donald Trump, according to media reports on Monday.

The top U.S. infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, told CNN on Monday he was concerned that information given by Atlas – a late addition to the White House coronavirus task force – was "really taken either out of context or actually incorrect."

The comments from Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, came hours after a news report quoted Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as sharing similar concerns.

"Everything he says is false," Redfield was quoted as saying during a Friday telephone call while on a plane from Atlanta to Washington, NBC reported. Redfield later told NBC that he was speaking about Atlas.

Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no background in infectious diseases, has faced scrutiny for downplaying the importance of face masks and his reported views on "herd immunity," an approach that holds that once enough individuals have been infected and become immune, others are less likely to be infected.

The White House insists it is not pursuing such a strategy, although Trump has mentioned it himself, and repeated on Monday his view that the United States was "rounding the corner" on the pandemic.

Atlas' views on handling the pandemic have been denounced by his peers at Stanford University's medical school and other health experts.

Atlas on Monday defended his advice to the president, saying what he said is "directly from the data and the science."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said Trump's advisers sometimes disagreed and that the president made policy decisions based on all the information he received.

The United States has recorded more than 7.1 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 205,000 deaths, both the highest in the world. Health experts fear a second wave of infections as the weather gets colder and people spend more time indoors.

Both Fauci and Redfield were conspicuously absent from a White House Rose Garden event on Monday where Trump hailed plans to ship 150 million rapid tests to U.S. states before asking Atlas to speak.

(REUTERS)