Reopening the country will require a four-step system to test for the coronavirus, isolate infections, trace contacts of the sick and quarantine those contacts for 14 days to ensure they’re not carriers, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
Tom Frieden, who worked under President Obama and is now the CEO of the Resolve to Save Lives — a public health nonprofit — said concepts the White House released late Thursday to open states are “sound.”
But the federal government should also steer the hard work of stamping out infections, he said.
Staying at home amounted to a “strategic retreat” from the pathogen and is half the strategy, according to the doctor.
The next phase will be going on offense to avoid a catastrophic setback in the nation’s economic revival.
“We need to put the virus in a box,” Dr. Frieden said.
• Test
Dr. Frieden said the U.S. is conducting about 150,000 tests per day but will need to increase that by a factor of three or up to 20 in some places to be successful.
He said health workers on the frontlines of the fight and vulnerable people in nursing homes should be prioritized.
President Trump has put the onus on states to make sure they are testing their people and using lab capacity wisely. He’s pointed to the raw number of tests conducted — about 3.5 million — as a sign of progress.
Yet governors and others say the U.S. needs to do better on a per-capita basis and will require federal leadership in procuring supplies.
Beyond the tests themselves, states need swabs, chemical reagents, trained staff and protective equipment for those staffers.
“There’s a whole supply chain for tests and the federal government needs to asses every level of that supply chain and make sure it is robust,” Dr. Frieden said.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Democrats are pushing a $30 billion plan to have an “immediate regime” on testing and use war-time powers under the Defense Production Act “to take over the factories and their supply chains and make it and distribute it across the country where it is needed.”
• Isolate
People who receive a positive test must be isolated “so the virus stops with them,” according to Dr. Frieden.
This will mean caring for the person at home or, if necessary, at the hospital.
Hospitals must be equipped to isolate and treat known infections in a safe manner so that health workers aren’t exposed.
Dr. Frieden cited a new CDC report that says roughly 10,000 health workers were infected during the first two months of the pandemic in the U.S.
“This is completely unacceptable,” Dr. Frieden said.
He said nursing homes also must take special precautions. In some places, nursing homes account for a huge proportion of overall coronavirus deaths.
“Every nursing home in the country could have an outbreak,” Dr. Frieden said.
• Trace
Once an infected person is identified, an army of personnel must be ready to trace that person’s close contacts.
“Contact-tracing can prevent a single case from becoming an outbreak and an outbreak from becoming a pandemic,” Dr. Frieden said.
States are beginning to train college students and others for this task, according to news reports.
Dr. Frieden said it is important to enlist people at “the speed of the virus,” while training them well.
The process involves confidentiality measures that avoid identifying the first, or “index,” case while warning people of their potential exposure.
“This is not a simple process, but it is a process that can be taught,” Dr. Frieden said.
• Quarantine
People who were likely exposed to the virus will have to lay low for 14 days, the incubation period for the virus, to ensure they’re not infected and spreading the virus around.
That means staying at home and having food delivered or, if that’s not possible, acquiring housing from the government or other systems for the length of the quarantine, according to Dr. Frieden.
The doctor said in some places, governments provided free Netflix service to keep people occupied during their quarantine.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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