If I told you in March or April that we would still have a 60-70k daily cases in July, what would you think? Now carry that forward. Where do we want to be in Sep, Oct, Nov & how do we get there? Answering that question has to be priority #1. It's time to reset the US response 1/
Colleagues and I are out with a new report today with 10 recommendations for how the US should chart a new course. Here’s a thread with a quick rundown of the 10 -
centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/publi…
centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/publi…
1. Encourage and, where appropriate, mandate things like physical distancing, masks, and limit on indoor gatherings. Without these measures in place, it will be difficult to maintain control of an outbreak or turn the corner on an outbreak that is accelerating.
2. Close higher risk activities and settings in places where the epidemic is worsening and reinstitute stay at home orders in jurisdictions where healthcare systems are in crisis. Hope is not a plan. Communities that are not doing well need to act.
3. Bolster PPE supply chains and stockpiles and make information about the PPE manufacturing base and supply chain publicly available, with the ultimate goal of expanding PPE availability as much as possible.
4. Bolster test supply chains, plan for shortages, and collaborate with states and commercial laboratories to improve test turnaround times. We’re doing more tests than ever, but in many places it’s still not enough, and the results are taking too long to be useful.
5. Conduct and make public detailed analyses of epidemiology data collected during case investigations and contact tracing. Where are people getting infected? How is testing performance? How well is contact tracing working? These are things we should know.
6. Curate and fund a rapid research agenda to cope with major challenges that have arisen. How do we make masks better, and how can we encourage people to wear them? How can we easily improve ventilation? What is the role of children in transmission? We should find out.
7. Scale up contact tracing and continue to improve performance. There is no way to contact trace tens of thousands of cases a day. It’s too much. But we can build the infrastructure and improve tracing operations so that it becomes more and more useful as incidence falls.
8. Identify and disseminate best practices for improving the public health response. Thousands of public health professionals have been running at top speed for months. What have they learned, and how we can we share those best practices with everyone?
9. Plan for a vaccine, incl production, allocation, distribution, and community engagement to ensure a successful rollout. Finding a safe and effective vaccine is step 1. We need to have our eyes on steps 2-99 as well. Let’s do that now, so we’re ready to hit the ground running.
10. Develop policies and best practices to better protect group institutions. Nursing homes, prisons and jails, manufacturing have been very hard hit. We should be doing more to shift the burden of paying for and implementing needed mitigation measures away from facilities.
The full report is linked here. Coauthors @Elena_Martin33 @C_R_Watson @MSchochSpana @T_Inglesby @anita_cicero centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/publi…
