New White House and CDC Coronavirus Guidelines Still Don’t Exist in Spanish [UPDATE]

By:
Mar 17, 2020
12:16 PM

On Monday evening, the White House and Centers for Disease Control released new coronavirus guidelines asking Americans to “avoid social gathering in groups of 10 people,” keep schooling at home, avoid non-essential travel, and advicing that elderly people stay at home. The guidelines are some of the most specific ones that the Trump administration had shared with the public.

Close to 18 hours after these guidelines were announced, there is still no official government Spanish version of the guidelines, and according to the White House, there was no indication as to when an official Spanish version will be made available to the public, as well as other official languages.

Latino Rebels contacted the White House on Monday night. The White House acknowledged receipt of the request, but did not share any specific information about when the Spanish version will be made public, if indeed it will be made public.

A March 17 review of the CDC’s Spanish-language Coronavirus section is about 11 days behind the new guidelines shared by the White House and the CDC on March 16 through WhiteHouse.gov and Coronavirus.gov. The last Spanish-language informational piece about the virus made public was dated March 6.

In addition, the CDC’s Spanish-language Twitter profile is tweeting information about the virus but nothing so far about the new guidelines:

The White House’s Spanish-language Twitter profile, La Casa Blanca, has yet to tweet anything about the CDC’s Spanish-language virus information page, except for a tweet about washing hands that came out on March 9.

Besides the washing hands tweet, the last two tweets from Casa Blanca profile was an English-language link to a White House tweet and a March 4 speech by President Trump to the Latino Coalition Legislative Summit.

Latino Rebels also contacted the CDC on Monday morning about when the new March 16 guidelines will be made available in Spanish and other languages. As of this posting, the CDC has not responded.

According to Pew, even though the number of Spanish speakers has decreased in the United States, a 2017 estimate said “37 million Latinos in the U.S. speak Spanish at home, making it the country’s most common non-English language.”

Despite the lack of official government guidelines in Spanish, several Spanish-language outlets are providing updates about the Monday news.

Also, people are being encouraged to check local state and city resources, where more updated multiple language versions are being shared. For example, New York City has latest information in Spanish dated March 15. The city of San Francisco has translated information that was updated on March 16.

After the Trump administration said in early 2017 that a Spanish-language version of the White House’s official page would go live eventually, there is still no Spanish-language version three years later.

Latino Rebels plans to update this story if both the White House and/or the CDC respond to the multiple requests for information about updated Spanish-language guidelines.

UPDATE, March 17, 2:45 p.m. ET: After not tweeting since March 10, the Casa Blanca Twitter profile retweeted the following CDC en Español content about washing hands (which CDC en Español just tweeted), but nothing in Spanish about the new March 16 guidelines:

UPDATE, March 17, 4:50 p.m. ET: The Twitter profile of the Committee for Hispanic Causes’ (CHC) Political Action Committee announced that it had translated the March 16 guidelines on its own. NBC News wrote about the reactions from Latino advocacy groups.

UPDATE, March 17, 8:15 p.m. ET: Both the White House and the CDC have still not shared news about whether the March 16 guidelines are in Spanish. However, journalist José Delgado of El Nuevo Día has tweeted a screen shot of a translation that appears to be related to the new guidelines:

UPDATE, March 17, 8:53 p.m. ET: Latino Rebels finally received a forwarded email from the White House about the translations:

UPDATE, March 18, 2020, 5:10 pm ET: Designed versions of the guidelines in Spanish have now been made available:

About one hour later, a link to the Spanish-language version was posted to a White House URL. In addition, La Casa Blanca tweeted it out, as well as Vice President Mike Pence’s profile.

UPDATE, March 19, 4:45 p.m.: The Spanish version is now officially linked to White House’s section on new coronavirus guidelines:

As of 5 p.m. ET on March 19, a check of Coronavirus.gov still doesn’t have a link to the official Spanish version:

UPDATE, March 19, 5:48 p.m. ET: The White House sent an email with the following information attributed to a White House official on background:

The White House disseminated Spanish-language guidelines on Tuesday to a multitude of reporters from Spanish and Hispanic outlets, whose collective reach is in the millions, and it was subsequently sent to more than a thousand leaders in the Hispanic and Latino communities. President Trump will continue to do everything he can to protect all Americans.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/coronavirus-guidelines-america/

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/prevention-sp.html

Some things to note about what White House said on Thursday afternoon and what was reported by Latino Rebels on Tuesday March 18:

As of this latest March 19 update, the Spanish guidelines still not on coronavirus.gov.

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Julio Ricardo Varela is founder and publisher of Latino Rebels, part of Futuro Media. He tweets from @julito77.