CDC Officials Who Spread Misinformation Apologized to Source of False Data but Not to Public: Emails

The Emergency Operations Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga., on March 19, 2021. Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images

U.S. health officials who spread inflated COVID-19 child death data in public meetings apologized to the source of the false data but not to the public, newly obtained emails show.

Drs. Katherine Fleming-Dutra and Sara Oliver, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), offered the false data in 2022 while U.S. officials weighed granting emergency authorization to COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months.