Washington: US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr told a Senate committee on Thursday that Centres for Disease Control and Prevention leaders who left the agency last week deserved to be fired.
He criticised CDC recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic tied to lockdowns and masking policies, and claimed — wrongly — that they “failed to do anything about the disease itself”.
“The people who at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” Kennedy said. He later said they deserved to be fired for not doing enough to control chronic disease.
The Senate Finance Committee called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again,” but Democratic Sen Ron Wyden said Kennedy was lying when he said he had the support of US doctors.
He said Kennedy had “stacked the deck” of a vaccines committee, replacing scientists with “sceptics and conspiracy theorists”.
Last week, when the Trump administration fired the CDC’s director less than a month into her tenure.