President Donald Trump’s Covid-19 Special Advisor Scott Atlas has filed for resignation and the decision will take effect on December 2. In his resignation letter, Mr. Atlas said he worked hard with a single goal of saving lives and helping the American people overcome the pandemic.
Mr. Atlas has been in the Trump administration since August and the move was controversial. Although not an expert on infectious diseases, Mr. Atlas promoted a public immunology that argues that older and more at risk groups should be protected while younger and healthier people should not be restricted.
Several other members of the White House’s anti-Covid-19 task force including Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, presented expressed concern or disagreement with Mr. Atlas’s views.
Since the election, President Trump has made little mention of the response to Covid-19, but only occasionally about progress in the development of the Covid-19 vaccine. Meanwhile, millions of people in the US were infected with Covid-19 alone in November with the number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths continuously increasing across the United States in recent years.
The United States currently records more than 13 million Covid-19 cases and more than 267,000 deaths.