PENCE DUMPS CDC REQUIREMENT FOR FACE COVERINGS IN TRAVEL HUBS

The effort of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to require face coverings in airplanes, buses, trains and in travel hubs last month has been torpedoed by US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

CDC drafted a sweeping order last month requiring all passengers and employees to wear masks on all forms of public and commercial transportation in the US but two federal health officials said it was blocked by the White House.

The order would have been the toughest federal mandate to date aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus, which continues to infect more than 40,000 Americans a day, the New York Times reported. Such a measure would have reduced infections and cut down the number of US COVID-19 fatalities, which has already breached 212,000, the highest in the world.

CDC officials said that it was drafted under the agency’s “quarantine powers” and that it had the support of the secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II, but the White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, declined to even discuss it.