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(CNN) -
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was pressured to minimize the risks of the covid-19 pandemic by reopening schools for face-to-face classes, Olivia Troye, a former senior adviser to the Vice President Mike Pence.
Troye said a story published by The New York Times about the lobbying campaign was accurate.
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The situation was a "nightmare"
Troye, who served as Pence's top staff member with the White House Coronavirus Task Force for months before leaving the Trump administration last month, called the situation a "nightmare."
Unfortunately, it was an effort, you know.
Sometimes I was taken by surprise, when there were junior employees who were tasked with looking up different data for graphs that would show that the virus was not that bad for certain populations, ages or demographics, "Troye told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Monday, Pence's former national security adviser.
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However, recent studies, including one from South Korea last month, have shown that children can transmit the coronavirus just like adults.
Troye confirmed an incident in June in which she and those junior employees, prodded by Pence chief of staff Marc Short, attempted to bypass the CDC to find data on Covid-19 that would better support President Donald Trump's stance.
The objective was to find data that covid-19 represented little risk for children and therefore schools should reopen.
"I think it put these task force members and doctors in a very challenging position," Troye said, describing "what was happening behind the scenes."
“I think they have seen from the beginning that the president's narrative has been that 'everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
It's time to get back to normal.
Let's get the economy going again. '
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A "deliberate disinformation campaign" for the CDC to minimize the risks of covid-19
Trump told the governors: “'They need to open the schools.
They have to try to make it look like everything is fine when in fact it is not.
"I think it's because his response has been so bad along the way, that his response was to tell anything but the truth," Troye said.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and a vaccine expert, called this a "deliberate campaign of misinformation."
"This is actually one component of a pretty impressive disinformation campaign, in a nefarious way, and an anti-science disinformation campaign launched by the White House," Hotez said.
More than 587,000 children in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Association of Children's Hospitals.
There was a 15% increase in cases in children between September 3 and 17.
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Redfield is in a difficult position
Troye said he believed that Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, was having a hard time trying to balance politics and what scientists were discovering about the coronavirus pandemic.
"I've seen Dr. Redfield trying to figure out how he's going to navigate this political landscape while representing the true evidence of what the scientists and the experts at the CDC and all the doctors were telling him."
Trump has publicly contradicted Redfield on several occasions, including just over a week after Redfield testified at a Senate hearing on a possible COVID-19 vaccine schedule.
The president said Redfield "made a mistake" and was "confused" when he said a vaccine wouldn't be available until next summer.
Troye said he avoided criticizing members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force because he saw the struggle over the summer between trying to balance Trump's agenda of reopening the economy and schools with communicating the deadly risks of the pandemic.
“I think it put these task force members and doctors in a very challenging position.
I saw them fight firsthand on a daily basis, ”he said.
Health experts have also been concerned about what many see as the politicization of the CDC under the Trump administration, pointing to various changes to its website in recent weeks.
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The CDC's position on covid-19
The CDC suddenly changed its guidance on testing asymptomatic coronavirus patients, saying they didn't need to be tested, before reversing the guidance a week later.
The agency also released guidance on the airborne transmission of the coronavirus just over a week ago, before suddenly eliminating it a few days later, saying it was posted in error.
US Health and Human Services communications officials had recently lobbied to change the language in weekly scientific reports released by the CDC so as not to undermine Trump's political message, a federal health official told CNN several weeks ago. .
Redfield later responded that "at no time has the scientific integrity been compromised" of these reports.
Troye has spoken out multiple times against the president and the response to the coronavirus pandemic since resigning, though Pence's office said she was fired.
But the former adviser declined to say whether she spoke to Pence about the problems she saw.
Cuomo asked if Pence was also asked to keep quiet about the risks to children if schools were opened too soon.
"Everyone has a boss, and unfortunately for Vice President Pence, his boss is Donald Trump," he said.
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