U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Top the 200,000 Mark

Also Monday the Daily Beast reported that a communications official with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) spent months downplaying the COVID-19 threat and maligning NIAID Director Tony Fauci, MD, and other US health officials on the conservative website RedState using a pseudonym. After the story broke, the NIAID official announced he was resigning from the agency.

During an interview on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” Monday, Fauci said the country’s divisiveness is a roadblock to the COVID-19 response. He emphasized that health precautions provide a pathway to reopening the economy and schools and that the measures are public health—not political—issues that shouldn’t pit groups against each other.

In a development that raises new questions about the COVID-19 response, the Washington Post reported today that $1 billion in Cares Act funds that Congress gave the Pentagon to boost the nation’s production of medical supplies for COVID-19 such as masks and swabs was mostly funneled to defense contractors to make other equipment, such as jet engine parts and body armor.

In other U.S. developments:

·  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to issue a tough new standard for emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines as early as this week, according to anonymous sources familiar with the situation who spoke to the Washington Post. For example, vaccine makers applying for EUAs would need to follow study participants for at least 2 months after receiving their second vaccine dose and at least five people with severe disease and infections in older people must appear in the placebo group for each trial. The extra requirements make it unlikely that a vaccine could be cleared by Election Day.

·  A vaccine advisory group to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has delayed a vote on COVID-19 vaccine prioritization, the WSJ originally reported. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has signaled that health workers are the top priority, but they are still weighing whether essential workers or seniors and those with underlying health conditions should be the second highest priority.

·  Though massive efforts are underway to speed the development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, little work has been done to gear them for children, the New York Times reported, quoting experts who said it could take at least a year to get a vaccine ready for children.

·  North Carolina health officials and their partners at the CDC today reported contact tracing experiences from two counties, which found that though the health department investigated the majority of index cases, a high proportion of patients didn’t report contacts and many of the contacts couldn’t be reached, factors that likely limit the impact of contact tracing as a mitigation step. They reported their findings in an early online edition of Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report.

Lisa Schnirring is news editor at CIDRAP.This articleis published courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy (CIDRAP).