US election LIVE UPDATES: Donald Trump conspiracy theorists switching to vaccines

Newly-released documents confirmed a Trump administration official sought to speed the spread of the coronavirus among children and young adults in order to achieve “herd immunity”.

Paul Alexander, a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, repeatedly encouraged the adoption of a policy to increase the number of virus infections among younger Americans, saying they have “zero to low risk,” according to documents released on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

“Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc” should be used “to develop herd … we want them infected,” Alexander wrote in one email, according to the documents.

“Achieving herd immunity before a vaccine is widely available – which requires a very large portion of the population to get infected with the coronavirus – has been widely rejected by scientists as a dangerous approach that would lead to the deaths of several hundred thousand Americans at a minimum,” James Clyburn, the Democrat chairman of the panel, said in the memo to members of the committee.

Herd immunity is when most of the population is immune to an infectious disease, stopping its spread. Depending on how contagious a disease is, roughly 50 per cent to 90 per cent of a population must be immune to protect the rest, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In a series of messages during the summer, Alexander continued to make the case to other officials to open up college campuses and businesses to increase the spread among the young and relatively healthy, while maintaining distancing measures for the elderly.

“The issue is who cares? If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares,” Alexander said in a July message. “As long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely (sic) and nursing homes, we must go on with life … who cares if we test more and get more positive tests.“

In August, President Donald Trump expressed support for the approach, saying the virus would “go away” once herd immunity was reached.

Other Trump officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, denied that the administration was pursuing herd immunity as a way to handle the virus.

Bloomberg

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