Thread by @PSampathkumarMD

The @CDCgov advice on PPE was problematic during H1N1, but they did eventually provide decent advice. With #COVID19 the CDC has failed us. This has made the job of hospital epidemiologists very difficult. Let me explain. Thread
@SHEA_Epi @CarlosdelRio7 @ASlavitt @JInterlandi

Problems with US response
1) Failure to acknowledge the magnitude of this threat at the very highest levels of government.

2) Lack of availability of testing in the early stages when containment was possible.

3) Impeding private labs (including direct threats) from developing and using their own tests. @DrMattBinnicker

4) Political manipulation of epidemiology /numbers in the early stages to make things appear better than they were. This has caused the virus to spread to all states

5) CDC guidance used to be THE authoritative source of information. But with #COVIDー19 CDC has given inadequate and overly cautious reccs which has cause massive confusion and placed knowledgeable healthcare epidemiologists at odds with their guidelines. @dan_diekema

6) Frontline healthcare workers don’t know who to believe. The Infection Control experts at their institutions or the CDC? This erodes trust in local infection control experts at a time when trust is needed more than ever. @h_babcock @choo_ek @IDdocAdi @dr_dmorgan @roeckler

7) Delaying in recommending closures and social distancing. States have had to take the initiative.

8) Not being prepared to process arriving US citizens from Europe this weekend & instead amplifying risk of #COVID19 transmission by having overcrowded arrival & processing areas