Rapid test gets emergency authorization - just in time for Trump to announce it at RNC
No surprise anymore that the White House is timing actions based on the political calendar. Meantime, a European study shows that kids can be safe from C19 if strictly kept within "social bubbles."
While I prefer keeping politics apart from public health, the boundary between the two has been erased completely now. Many people were going to have questions about any FDA, CDC or other federal decision at this point anyway, so perhaps we are best off acknowledging this and figuring out how to move forward. The quote from Dr. Redfield about testing cannot possibly be true. We simply do not have anywhere near the necessary resources to do rapid, effective COVID-19 testing on the scale that public health experts have recommended for months.
The president will use his Republican National Convention speech Thursday to announce that the U.S. government will purchase 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests from Abbott Laboratories for $750 million. Abbott received emergency use authorization from the FDA on Wednesday. The company says it can produce 50 million tests per month.
Pregnant women are at greater risk for severe COVID-19 but not greater risk for deaths from it, according to a new CDC report.
A study in Barcelona finds that transmission of COVID-19 among children occurs at a rate similar to the general population, kids under 12 transmit at the same rate as older kids, and transmission risk can be minimized if children are kept strictly within their own “social bubbles” and wash their hands frequently (the study subjects washed hands five times a day or more.)
Controversy and confusion over testing continues: CDC Director Robert Redfield now says that the quiet update to COVID-19 testing guidelines that discouraged testing those who were exposed to the virus and without symptoms was intended to help people decide whether a test was needed. Relatedly, CDC today updated guidelines for healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19. As with guidelines for the public, CDC does not advise automatically testing nurses, doctors or other healthcare workers even after known COVID-19 exposure.
A sad but very thoroughly reported long-read shows point-by-point how COVID-19 spread through the first known hot spot, a nursing home near Seattle. “In retrospect, almost everyone would agree, the nursing home should have canceled the Mardi Gras party,” says the article in The California Sunday Magazine. (Hat-tip to The Verge for amplifying this story.)
Useful: The USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism has sound advice for journalists (and others) about avoiding “science trolls” — and how to better help the public distinguish between rigorous science and other “information.” The key point: Don’t force “both sides” without making sure there are facts to back up whatever claims are included.
What happens when vaccine decisions are rushed: This 1978 book is one of several that delve into the failed swine flu vaccine program in 1976. The results of that failed public health response changed the vaccine industry forever and planted seeds of skepticism about vaccines in the American public.
More on the testing guidelines: NIAID Director Anthony Fauci told CNN that the White House Coronavirus Task Force meeting where the new guidelines were discussed occurred while he was under general anesthesia for a scheduled surgical procedure. One report says, “The remaining members of the task force literally waited until Fauci was unconscious before making the change.”