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US President Donald Trump has selected a new advisor for coronavirus task force amid tensions between the President and Dr. Anthony Fauci. Newly selected advisor Dr. Scott Atlas is a healthcare policy expert at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University. President informed reporters in a press conference and said, “Scott is a very famous man who’s also very highly respected. He’s working with us and will be working with us on the coronavirus. And he has many great ideas. And he thinks what we’ve done is really good, and now we’ll take it to a new level”. However, the official role of Dr. Atlas was announced last Monday. He has reportedly been counseling Trump informally for weeks after the president spotted him on Fox News.

Trump administration hasn’t said whether Dr. Atlas is being paid to undertake his role on the task force. The appointment came as Trump’s relationship with a number of the current members of the task force continues to break down, including Dr. Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. President Trump has regularly criticized the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on a number of occasions over the last few months. He said that Fauci has made a lot of mistakes and is a little bit of an alarmist. Dr. Fauci has contradicted Trump on a number of occasions on issues related to the pandemic including testing and the severity of the pandemic across the United States.

Last month, the White House also attempted to discredit Dr. Fauci and said that several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things. Trump has recently shown his disapproval at Dr. Birx. He called her pathetic after she said in an interview that coronavirus had become extraordinarily widespread at the beginning of August. President Trump’s criticism of Dr. Birx marks the first time he’s publicly attacked the doctor. Dr. Atlas has frequently expressed views in line with Trump’s regarding the reopening of schools during the epidemic. He informed Fox News and said, “Of course, we can reopen schools. Everyone else in the world and the western world, our peer nations are doing it. We are the outlier here. There are virtually zero risks to children of getting something serious or dying from this disease”.