The White House defended conflicting responses from President Joe Biden’s top medical advisers around new quarantine guidelines for people with COVID-19, prompting scrutiny toward the federal response.
“They change their guidance, certainly. I’m sure they have disagreements internally about what they put out,” press secretary Jen Psaki said, calling it “a healthy part of a discussion of a policy process.”
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Psaki said political and economic considerations are not driving the White House’s response.
“The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is absolutely led by data and science,” she told reporters. “If they hadn’t changed their recommendations over the course of time, schools would probably be closed across the country.”
Amended quarantine guidance by the CDC on Dec. 27 shortened the isolation period from 10 days to five days for asymptomatic people. It did not include a requirement to test negative before resuming normal activities, prompting criticism and a response from Dr. Anthony Fauci over the weekend that such a measure could soon be added.
Shortages of rapid at-home tests have complicated efforts to return to work, even as the White House said it is working to boost supply. The government has promised to supply some 500 million tests.
Psaki said the administration will continue to expand federal testing sites and will soon provide at-home kits available to order via a new website. Private insurers will begin reimbursing Americans for over-the-counter tests by next week, Psaki said. But those can be hard to find.
Last month, a top government official said that, in part, the revised protocol was shaped by what the CDC believed the public could handle.
“It really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told CNN about the decision to shorten the isolation period.
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She told reporters Wednesday during a White House coronavirus task force briefing that test shortages had no bearing on the guidance.
