Dr. Birx Contradicts Trump Claim Kids Don’t Transmit Coronavirus ‘Easily’: It’s ‘Unclear How Rapidly’ Kids Spread Virus

White House coronavirus task force expert Dr. Deborah Birx said that it’s “unclear how rapidly” children spread the coronavirus, contradicting President Donald Trump’s recent suggestions that children “don’t transmit very easily.”

On Friday morning’s edition of NBC’s Today Show, anchor Savannah Guthrie asked Birx about the administration’s push to reopen schools.

Guthrie mentioned the pressure to reopen and the threat to withhold funds, and said “The president has said children don’t get the virus as much, and if they do they get better quick, I think you said an interview a couple days ago there’s an open question and you’re studying it.”

“If it’s not known, how are schools supposed to safely reopen, what are parents to think if we really don’t have the science and we don’t know the answer to those questions about how much kids are passing it on and how much risk they pose?” Guthrie asked.

Dr. Birx first praised Trump at length for displaying charts at his briefings showing the hot spots, then addressed the question by telling Guthrie “What I can’t really tell you today is whether children under 10, we know that children under 18 are less sick, but there are some that suffer terrible consequences if they have underlying conditions.”

“What I can’t tell you for sure, despite the South Korea study, is whether children under 10 in the United States don’t spread the virus as the same as children over 10. I think that is still an open question that needs to be studied in the United States. We certainly know from other studies that children under 10 do get infected, it’s just unclear how rapidly they spread the virus,” Dr. Birx said.

Dr. Birx made a similar statement several weeks ago, as the push to reopen schools got underway.

Birx’s statement contradicts what Trump said during Wednesday’s briefing, during which he told reporters that “They do say that they [children] don’t transmit very easily, a lot of people are saying they don’t transmit and we are studying very hard that particular subject: that they don’t bring it home with them. They don’t catch it easily, they don’t bring it home easily, and if they do catch it, they get better fast.”

A study performed in South Korea found that children under ten years old were about half as likely as older children and adults to spread the coronavirus, but the researchers warned “Young children may show higher attack rates when the school closure ends, contributing to community transmission of Covid-19,” and The New York Times noted that “Other studies have also suggested that the large number of contacts for schoolchildren, who interact with dozens of others for a good part of the day, may cancel out their smaller risk of infecting others.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Dr. Birx warned of the seriousness of the current surge, likening it to “three New Yorks.”

Watch the clip above via NBC.