The CDC warned against a 'poorly designed' plan to implement temperature screenings at 20 US airports. The White House is reportedly moving forward with it anyway.

• The White House reportedly plans to go ahead with a plan to institute temperature screenings at 20 US airports in order to instill confidence that air travel is safe, according to USA Today.
• According to leaked emails, a top CDC official said that such a strategy was ineffective and asked that the agency be excluded from the plan.
• Temperature checks do not account for asymptomatic COVID-19 cases, pre-symptomatic cases, or people with COVID-19.
• The report comes one day after an Associated Press report found that the White House had buried CDC guidance for re-opening businesses, schools, and churches.
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The Trump administration reportedly ignored guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over temperature screenings at airports and plans to go ahead with them, even though they were ineffective in initially preventing the spread of COVID-19 in the US.

The move, which would require temperature screenings at 20 US airports, was detailed in leaked documents reported by USA Today on Saturday. In an email to officials at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Martin Cetron, the director of global mitigation and quarantine at the CDC had argued "thermal scanning as proposed is a poorly designed control and detention strategy as we have learned very clearly."

"We should be concentrating our CDC resources where there is impact and a probability of mission success," he said, adding he wasn't even sure whether his agency had the legal authority  to participate in the administration's effort.

"Please kindly strike out CDC from this role," he said in the email, USA Today reported.

As USA Today noted, the DHS plan comes after the CDC had attempted to institute temperature screenings at airports earlier this year, which weren't successful in preventing the ongoing outbreak in the US. According to a CNN report from February, the CDC had conducted temperature checks of more than 30,000 individuals in 11 airports and hadn't caught a single case of COVID-19.

Temperature screenings are not effective in detecting many cases of COVID-19, as about a quarter of COVID-19 patients never develop a fever, Business Insider previously reported. Temperature checks fail to detect asymptomatic cases, pre-symptomatic cases, and cases of individuals suffering from symptoms other than a fever.

Despite Cetron's warning, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly directed the DHS push forward on the screening measures anyway, according to meeting notes. The temperature checks would be meant to instill confidence in travelers, he said, USA Today reported.

The news comes amid an Associated Press report that top officials in the White House reportedly shelved CDC-approved guidance for businesses, churches, and schools to reopen. States across the US have already begun reopening businesses, and many plan to continue to further relax social distancing measures in the coming weeks.

Travelers with high temperatures would be directed to the CDC for further testing in order to be cleared to travel if the White House plan were enacted. The plan has not been finalized, according to USA Today.

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