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The FDA has halted the work of an innovative coronavirus testing program widely touted by the likes of Bill Gates and public health officials.

Regulators want to review the program further. One expert called the shutdown "bizarre."

nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/…
The group has tested thousands of at-home kits, finding unidentified coronavirus cases. The FDA says it had thought the program was just a “surveillance” effort that wasn’t reporting results back to patients. But details of the program have been widely reported since March.
Remarkably, the program has roots in the Seattle Flu Study, which struggled for weeks in February to get approval to test old samples for coronavirus and report results. It then did testing anyway and found the area's first case of community transmission. nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/…
Here's a blog post that Bill Gates posted this week celebrating the Seattle coronavirus testing program. An FDA memo halting the effort came the same day.
gatesnotes.com/Health/Seattle…
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Mike Baker
@ByMikeBaker
We've been inundated with messages from people who believe they had Covid-19 early this year, and many who suspect they had it back in 2019.

Is that even possible? There’s a ton of speculation out there, so we compiled an explainer on the evidence. 1/8
nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/…
One key data point:
A flu study group in Seattle, which was an early Covid epicenter, has now examined *thousands* of stored samples from January/February. The first Covid hit was Feb 20. That strongly suggests the virus was a miniscule fraction of illnesses early this year. 2/8
But could it have been circulating in January? Yes. In fact, a California death on Feb 6, now linked to coronavirus by tissue sample, is compelling evidence there was some level of community transmission — perhaps very limited — by the end of January. 3/8
nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/…
Read 8 tweets
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Mike Baker
@ByMikeBaker
New York City has now reported 1 coronavirus death for every 1,000 people living there. What a horrifying milestone. Still hard for me to wrap my head around.

nytimes.com/interactive/20…
For perspective: Those numbers are now approaching the level of death seen in Lombardy, Italy

(102 deaths per 100,000 people, versus 118)

nytimes.com/interactive/20…
𝟖,𝟔𝟑𝟐 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐮𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐬 in New York City

• More deaths than any other country except Italy, Spain, France and the U.K.
• 26% of all U.S. deaths
• 3 times higher than the immediate death toll at the World Trade Center on 9/11
Read 3 tweets
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Mike Baker
@ByMikeBaker
For our story about Seattle's signs of progress, we wrote about the statistical modeling that had been shared privately with public officials in Washington State. That modeling has now been finalized.

Let's walk through it a bit more... (1/6)

nytimes.com/2020/03/29/us/…
Researchers believe transmission of the virus has “declined considerably" in the Seattle area.

When distancing measures began, each infected person was spreading to perhaps 2.7 others. That has dropped to ~1.4.

It needs to get below 1 for active infections to begin decreasing.
How does this modeling work?

They have tens of thousands of COVID-19 test results by date, along with coronavirus deaths. That’s being combined with other data points, including anonymized geolocation data on Facebook users, showing how much people are staying home. (3/6)
Read 6 tweets

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