The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should have updated its guidelines on cleaning household surfaces well before this week, said the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Dr. Ashish Jha told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “I think I started saying by April and May last year, many of us in public health, we don’t wipe the surfaces anymore.”
“Actually, I don’t understand what it took the CDC so long to be really clear about this. This virus is spread through the air,” Jha said.
The CDC said Monday that a thorough cleaning with soap and water is adequate to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the home. However, it is recommended to use disinfectants in schools and homes where there has been a suspected or confirmed case of the virus within 24 hours.
“In most cases, regular cleaning of surfaces with soap and detergent, not necessarily disinfecting those surfaces, is sufficient to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a briefing. from the White House on Monday.
Jha noted that the CDC’s public health messages were part of a broader pattern of weak messages from the government when it comes to Covid.
“I would say the first two months, confusing, but by April, last May, it was very clear that it was in the air,” Jha said. “It was frustrating that this didn’t always come out consistently from our federal officials.”
The CDC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Host Shepard Smith also asked Jha about the highly contagious variant B.1.1.7 after Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, warned on Sunday that the variant could infect children more easily than previous strains.
Jha said he was “concerned” about variant B.1.1.7 in children, especially since they had not yet been vaccinated.
“We don’t see a lot of infections in the elderly because we vaccinate them, which really leaves young adults and children vulnerable to B.1.1.7,” Jha said. “One of the reasons we can’t relax completely now is that we really need to reduce these infection numbers.”
Each state in the country reported at least one case of variant B.1.1.7 that was first detected in the United Kingdom, according to CDC data. Walensky said Wednesday that the variant becomes the main Covid strain in many regions of the US