Looking back on the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the White House task force coordinator said Monday that they wish the United States had gone into a stricter lockdown.
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HOUSTON, TX – JULY 28: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Medical staff members treat a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at United Memorial Medical Center on July 28, 2020 in Houston, Texas. COVID-19 cases and hospital appearances have reopened since Texas, pushing intensive care units to full capacity and raising concerns about an increase in deaths as the virus spreads. (Photo by Go Nakamura / Getty Images)
“I wish that when we went into the lockdown (in March), we looked like Italy,” said Drs. Deborah Birx Monday. “When Italy shut down, I mean, people were not allowed out of their homes (without passports). Americans did not respond well to that kind of ban.”
In Italy when the virus spread, residents were told to stay home and leave only for essential activities. Authorities would stop and check people to make sure they had documents that said where and why they were traveling.
In a roundtable discussion hosted by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Birx said she has learned what Americans are willing to do to fight the virus, and that officials need to meet people wherever they are.
Birx cited the strategy Arizona has used to reduce the growing number of cases. People could still go in less capacity to shopping malls and restaurants, but gyms and bars were closed, mask mandates were carried out, and gatherings of more than 10 people were banned.
“People were interacting, people were out, but people, by just not doing these cautious things, could significantly reduce the cases, probably by more than 80%,” Birx said.
That kind of behavior change is what any American can do, she said.
“Tens of thousands of lives can be saved if we wear masks, and we have no parties in our backyards … these masks take off,” Birx said.
Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, disagreed, saying President Donald Trump was “very advanced” when he and the task force issued guidelines in mid-March.
“This was done at the time to make sure we had enough hospital capacity and supplies so we didn’t end up like Italy, where there were people staring at gurneys in waiting rooms,” Kushner told Wolf Blitzer of CNN.
He complimented the president on the administration’s response to a fan shortage, and reiterated the White House line that no Americans who needed a fan got one.
“So, I think we have done much better than Italy in terms of how we handled this in the first place,” he said.
Kushner said the United States is in the middle of the pandemic phase and the administration is using what it has learned to protect the most vulnerable people. He said they advised sources to go to nursing homes.
The novel coronavirus has infected more than 5.4 million Americans and killed more than 170,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Virus is killer 3 in the US
The virus, which did not even exist a year ago, now kills more Americans than disease, Alzheimer’s, accidents and diabetes.
In the past three weeks, the U.S. has averaged more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths per day.
“Covid is now the No. 3 cause of death in the U.S. – ahead of accidents, injuries, lung disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many, many other causes,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in the US, according to the CDC.
The death toll from Covid-19 is also much higher in the U.S. than in many other countries, Frieden said.
“Last week, Americans were eight times more likely to kill Covid than Europeans were,” he said.
Less testing = more infected people running
Just as more students are returning to school, health experts are worried about a disruptive trend: declining tests combined with high test-positive scores.
In other words, Covid-19 is still very widespread, but there are fewer tests to find and isolate cases.
The number of tests performed each day in the US dropped by an average of 68,000 compared to the daily rate at the end of July, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.
Fifteen states conducted fewer tests this past week compared to the previous week: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.
However, test positivity scores – the percentage of tests that are positive – are even higher than the recommended 5% in more than 30 states, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
“The test situation is not good in the United States. What we are not picking up on are people who are contagious,” said Dr. William Haseltine, president and president of Access Health International.
“We probably miss 8 out of 10 people who are infected. And any decrease in testing is worrying because we are not doing it right already. And if you do not choose people from an infected person, then the epidemic. This epidemic is still widespread. ”
Why do some states test less?
Medical experts say there could be several reasons.
“One of the reasons testing is declining is that deliveries are not being sent to places that can be tested. I think it’s part of a strategy to not count how many people are infected,” Haseltine said.
Another reason is that people may be less motivated to be tested, knowing that it may take several days or longer to get results. And major delays can make some tests “borderless useless.”
CNN medical analyst Dr Kent Sepkowitz said he was concerned that some states could take instructions from President Donald Trump, who said “if you do more tests, you will find more cases,” which the United States “can see poorly” .
Sepkowitz, an infection control expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, notes that several states that have reduced cases also have some of the highest test positivity scores – an indicator that the virus is spreading.
“Thus, even as rates fall, many states have decided to reduce their efforts to find cases,” he wrote. “As a result, by searching less, they find fewer cases and sure enough, the case numbers go down.”
Governor of Florida is making success
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state has seen six consecutive weeks of decline in test positivity rates.
And the number of hospitalized patients with coronavirus has dropped by nearly 40% since increasing on July 22, he added. The number of ICU patients has dropped by 30% since July 18th.
DeSantis said it thinks the declining trends across the state are sustainable. “We will continue to work hard to see these good trends.”
One of the measures the state took to stun the number of cases was to close bars in late June.
Halsey Beshears, Florida’s top business regulator, is researching feedback and ideas from its meetings with bar and brewery owners from across the state, but no timeline for reopening bars has been set, according to Karen Smith, a spokeswoman for ‘ e Florida Department of or Business and Professional Regulations.
“While no time frame for re-election is certain, Secretary Beshears understands the urgency that business owners are advocating in these recent meetings,” Smith said.
Lack of minority volunteers could delay faxes
While medical experts hope a vaccine will be publicly available by 2021, researchers have encountered a problem: not enough Black and Latino volunteers have signed up for clinical trials.
Of the 350,000 people who have registered online, 10% are black as Latino, according to Dr. Jim Kublin, executive director of operations for the Covid-19 Prevention Network.
That is not nearly enough, because subjects reflect the population that is affected. Research shows that more than half of American Covid-19 cases have been between Black and Latino people.
Much of the mistrust stems from a history of medical atrocities against minorities. From 1932 to 1972, Black men were subjects in the Tuskegee syphilis study without their knowledge or permission and were not offered penicillin to treat their disease.
In the 1800s, Drs. J. Marion Sims on slaves and performed operations without their permission and without anesthesia.
And from the 1940s to the 1970s, researchers in various studies exposed hundreds of subjects – mostly Black people – to dangerous amounts of radiation.
Health officials are trying to win the trust of minority communities and are recruiting more diverse volunteers for Phase 3 coronavirus vaccine tests.
So far, phases 1 and 2 have shown that the vaccine is safe. Some volunteers experienced fever and muscle cramps, but after a day or two they felt better.
A quick, inexpensive test just got emergency service approval
There’s some good news: A new detective test could give Americans a quick way to learn if they have Covid-19 – and if they need to isolate it to help prevent it from spreading.
Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health conducted the SalivaDirect test, which on Saturday received authorization for emergency use from the Food and Drug Administration.
“If cheap alternatives like SalivaDirect can be implemented nationwide, we can finally get a grip on this pandemic, even before a vaccine,” said Nathan Grubaugh, a Yale assistant professor of epidemiology.
Unlike some other tests that require specialized deliveries, the SalivaDirect test does not require a specific swab as a collection device. It can also be used with reagents from multiple vendors.
“We’ve simplified the test so that it only costs a few dollars for reagent, and we expect labs to only pay about $ 10 per sample,” Grubaugh said.
Researchers said the new test could produce results in less than three hours, and the accuracy is consistent with results from traditional nasal swabbing. They said SalivaDirect tests could be made public in the coming weeks.
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