SalivaDirect, a test that does not require special deliveries and can deliver results in less than three hours, could be available to the public in a matter of weeks, according to Anne Wyllie, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health who participated of the team responsible for the protocol.
And although many are in the early stages and are not peer-reviewed, a recent batch of studies have shown that people – even those with mild symptoms – have a “robust” immune response against coronavirus that could provide evidence that a vaccine could protect it. public for more than just a short period of time, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
“This is very good news and it’s optimistic,” Lipkin said. “You know, it’s a little blue sky we were looking for.”
How long that protection will last is not yet clear, but studies indicate it could take months.
And Surgeon General Dr Jerome Adams said that even as tests improve, the nation must stay on prevention efforts.
“We can not test our way out of this problem,” Adams said. “We have to lean on prevention, and that’s making sure everyone wears a mask, washes their hands and looks at their distance from others.”
US has the worst response from any of the major countries
The United States’ response to the virus is not only lacking, said director of the Harvard Global Institute of Health Dr. Ashish Jha Monday, it is the “worst reaction of a great country.”
“We did not come here overnight. This has really been one after the other,” Jha said. “The only factor that really sets us apart from everyone else is denialism that has permeated our whole approach.”
Even once the public and federal government came on board with the existence of the virus, many diminished its severity, Jha said. And now they believe that a vaccine will end the pandemic in just two months, which Jha said is not the case.
But there was no good excuse for the lack of response because the U.S. was just preparing for a pandemic, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said Monday.
“There have now been several decades of efforts, indeed, to better prepare our nation for a range of biological threats, to invest in certain critical resources, but also to practice against simulation of threats,” former FDA commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg said during an American Society for Microbiology briefing. “Through every kind of assessment that was done about ready preparation, we had expected that, although hardly perfect, we would be better prepared than we were,” she said.
In a roundtable discussion hosted by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Birx said Americans do not seem to be responding well to bans, but that concessions could still be made.
“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.
Schools on decision-making as researchers learn more about coronavirus in young people
Health experts who learn more about how young people contract and spread the virus need to decide if and how to bring students back to school for the new academic year.
A common perception is that young people do not have to worry about infection, said director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr Anthony Fauci on Monday. But researchers have found that even those who are not in the hospital can have “really annoying” effects in the long run.
“In people who are young and otherwise healthy, who do not need hospitalization, but become ill and symptomatic enough to stay in bed for a week or two or three and then get better, they remove the virus – they have residual symptoms for weeks and sometimes months, “he said during an American Society for Microbiology briefing.
“These are people who have apparently recovered from Covid-19,” he said.
Meanwhile, many schools that have returned the instruction personally have reported infections rapidly.
In the first week of instruction in person, at least three Florida school districts told students to be quarantined. The most recent of which, Baker County School District, has reported at least three positive cases, according to the Florida Department of Health.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said the state is struggling with returning to learning in person, and is responding to accusations of bending to pressure.
“No one will pressure me in any way to put our teachers, our service staff, our children back in a situation that I feel in my heart that is not as safe as we make it possible to be,” Justice said.
Trends vary between states
The virus and its spread differ greatly in different states.
Los Angeles County, a hotspot in California, has seen steady progress in the fight to curb the virus, said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health of LA County, Monday. Daily hospitalizations have dropped 37% in the last month.
“We remain cautiously optimistic that all the sacrifices and hard work we have seen in our province are working and that we are in fact back to bear the brunt,” Ferrer said.
But other states do not see such optimism.
Texas overcame 10,000 coronavirus-related deaths Monday. And Florida nearly doubled the number of coronavirus deaths in about a month, bringing the total to 9,539.
Mar, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted Monday that the state reports the lowest number of Covid-19 cases in a single day since mid-June at 2,760; adding that the number of coronavirus-positive patients currently hospitalized in the state has dropped nearly 40% since July 21st.
CNN’s Raja Razek, Artemis Moshtaghian, Topher-Gauk Roger, Amanda Watts, Naomi Thomas, Jen Christensen and Anna Sturla contributed to this report.
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