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CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield testifies during a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Work and Pensions Committee hearing to examine Covid-19, focusing on an update of the federal response on Washington, DC, on September 23, 2020.
Alex Edelman | AFP | fake images
The next few months of the Covid-19 pandemic will be among “the most difficult in the history of this nation’s public health,” Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday.
Redfield, speaking at an event organized by the US Chamber of Commerce, said that about 90% of the nation’s hospitals are in “hot zones and red zones.” He added that 90% of long-term care facilities are in high-spread areas.
“So we are at a very critical time right now to be able to maintain the resilience of our health care system,” Redfield said. “The reality is that December, January, and February will be tough times. In fact, I think they will be the hardest in the history of this nation’s public health, in large part due to the stress that is going to be put on our health. care system “.
Redfield added that deaths caused by Covid-19 are already increasing. He said the country is now in the range of reporting 1,500 to 2,500 deaths from Covid-19 every day.
“The concerns about mortality are real,” he said. “And I think sadly, before we see February, we could be close to 450,000 Americans [that] they have died from this virus. “
However, Redfield noted that the country has the tools it needs to reduce the severity of the outbreak. He advocated for the strategic closure of certain parts of the society, such as indoor bars and restaurants. He said he was “disappointed” when New York City briefly closed all of its public schools last month, adding that schools do not appear to drive the spread of the virus.
He also pointed to college and university campuses, where he said outbreaks have been largely prevented on many campuses through the strategic deployment of surveillance testing combined with infection prevention measures such as the use of masks.
“I used to think that the hardest group that we were going to have to help contain this was basically college students,” he said. “But what happened over the summer and fall, is that a lot of the colleges and universities really struggled to develop comprehensive mitigation measures.”
One factor that makes this virus so dangerous, Redfield said, is that it is spread primarily through people who have no symptoms, or it is spread before patients develop symptoms. That makes it difficult to control what he called “the silent epidemic” without testing the entire population, including people without symptoms but who may have been exposed to the virus. The CDC is working on a guide for institutions and workplaces that will help them strategically implement the tests, he said.
Another silver lining, Redfield said, is that there are promising vaccines on the way, but mitigation measures will be needed well into next year. He predicted that the country will not be able to hold large meetings again until the fall of 2021.
There are many lessons to be learned from the pandemic, Redfield said, adding that “I was not prepared to understand how little investment had been made in basic public health capabilities.”
He said there has been inadequate investment in public health laboratories across the country that process many diagnostic tests and in digitizing public health records, hampering the federal government’s response to the pandemic.
“There is a huge lack of investment, and I hope this pandemic will change,” he said. Redfield estimated that the health crisis has cost the United States at least $ 8 trillion.
“Probably one of our biggest victims of this year’s pandemic was the impact on the business community, and only on general healthcare, the impact on the education of our children.”
