Can You Believe?

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday falsely claimed that healthcare workers “don’t get infected” with Covid-19 “because they take appropriate precautions” as he attempted to make the case for reopening schools in the fall—even with coronavirus cases surging across the United States.

“There’s no reason we can’t do any of this,” Azar, a former pharmaceutical lobbyist and executive, said during an event at the White House. “We have healthcare settings. We have healthcare workers, they don’t get infected because they take appropriate precautions. They engage in social distancing, they wear facial covering, they use good personal hygiene. This can work, you can do all of this. There’s no reason schools have to be in any way any different.”

In addition to noting that Azar’s claim about healthcare workers not getting infected is wildly false—according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 94,000 healthcare workers have contracted Covid-19 and at least 500 have died—medical professionals rejected the argument that precautionary measures taken in healthcare settings can easily be replicated in the nation’s schools.