The Trump administration is considering dissolving the White House coronavirus task force within several weeks, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Olivia Troye, a senior adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, has told officials on the task force to expect the group to complete its activities in the coming weeks.
“We’re having conversations about that,” Pence told reporters on Tuesday.
A Trump administration official told the Times that much of the country would then move towards Phase 1 of the president’s guidelines to reopen the economy, focusing more on developing a coronavirus vaccine and mass testing, as well as therapeutics.
However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Tuesday denied reports that the task force would be dismantled.
“That’s not true, I’ve been in every task force meeting, and that’s not what they are doing,” Fauci told CBS.
The task force, led by Pence, has been at the forefront of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, presenting daily briefings on the pandemic from the White House. A task force briefing scheduled for Saturday was canceled, and the group did not convene at all on Monday.
President Trump frequently used the task force briefings to provide extended question-and-answer sessions to the press. However, last week several of Trump’s advisers presented him with internal campaign polls showing rival Joe Biden with solid leads in swing states, in an effort to convince the president to reduce his presence at the briefings.
The president’s average approval ratings have slipped to 43 percent as of Tuesday from a high of 47 percent in mid-March, according to RealClearPolitics.