The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should have updated their guidelines for cleaning household surfaces well in advance of this week, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health said Tuesday.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Dr. Ashish Jha on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “I think I started saying in early April and May that many of us in public health are going to stop wiping surfaces.”
“I don’t really understand why it took CDC so long to really clarify this. This virus is being spread through the air,” Jha said.
The CDC said on Monday that a thorough scrub with soap and water is enough to keep Covid-19 from spreading in the home. However, the use of disinfectants is recommended in schools and indoor homes where there has been a suspected or confirmed virus case within 24 hours.
“In most situations, regular cleaning of surfaces with soap and detergent, not necessarily disinfecting those surfaces, is enough to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky at a White House briefing on Monday.
Jha noted that the CDC’s public health coverage is part of a larger pattern of bad reporting from the government when it comes to Covid.
“I’d say the first few months are confusing, but in April, May last year, it was very clear that this is up in the air,” Jha said. “It was frustrating that that has not always come from our federal officials consistently.”
The CDC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Host Shepard Smith also asked Jha about the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant after Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, warned on Sunday that the variant can infect children more easily than previous strains.
Jha said he is “concerned” about the B.1.1.7 variant in children, especially since they have not yet been vaccinated.
“We don’t see a lot of infections in older people because we get them vaccinated, and that makes young adults and children really vulnerable to B.1.1.7,” noted Jha. “One of the reasons we can’t fully relax right now is that we really need to lower these infection rates.”
Every state in the country has reported at least one case of the B.1.1.7 variant first discovered in the United Kingdom, data from the CDC shows. Walensky said on Wednesday that the variant is becoming the predominant Covid tribe in many regions of the US