by Jonathan Wolf - The White House released a new coronavirus strategy Wednesday that is aimed at ushering the U.S. into a new normal.
The idea behind the new strategy is to move the nation out of crisis mode and into a stage where the virus will no longer disrupt everyday life. The president spoke in broad strokes about the way forward during his State of the Union address last night.
“I know you’re tired, frustrated and exhausted,” President Biden said. “But I also know this: Because of the progress we’ve made, because of your resilience and the tools that we have been provided by this Congress, tonight I can say we are moving forward safely, back to more normal routines.”
The plan fleshed out the speech with details, including four main goals:
Protecting against and treating Covid-19. A “test to treat program” will allow Americans to get tested at a pharmacy and, if they are positive, “receive antiviral pills on the spot at no cost,” the president said last night. The plan includes efforts to boost American vaccine manufacturing capacity to one billion doses a year, inoculate young children when a vaccine is authorized and counter disinformation.
Preparing for new variants. The plan aims to improve the country’s surveillance capabilities to identify new variants quickly. Biden said that his administration aimed to develop new vaccines within 100 days of a variant’s arrival.
Avoiding shutdowns. This part of the plan aims to give schools and businesses Covid tests, guidance and supplies, including for improvements to ventilation and air filtration systems. It includes a proposal for paid sick leave for those who miss work for a case of Covid or those who care for a loved one who is infected.
Fighting the virus abroad. The plan pledges to donate 1.2 billion vaccine doses around the world and to work to solve the supplemental oxygen crisis by making emergency supplies widely available.
While some of these initiatives are new, like the “test to treat” program, much of the strategy draws on actions the administration is already taking. For instance, the part of the plan aimed at boosting American manufacturing of vaccines was unveiled in November. Congress will have to fund much of the plan.
Biden came into office more than a year ago with a 200-page plan to address the coronavirus, which was the most pressing challenge in his nascent presidency. Since then, more than 200 million Americans have been fully vaccinated. But two new waves of infections — one fueled by the Delta variant, the other by Omicron — have driven up deaths to nearly one million.
The end of contact tracing?
Two years ago, the director of the C.D.C. called for 100,000 contact tracers to help contain major outbreaks of the virus. This week, the C.D.C. said that it largely no longer recommended the practice.
“This is a big change,” said Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. But it reflects what was already happening across the country, in part, because of the highly contagious nature of Omicron, she said. “There was no way contact tracing could keep up with that. Many of the cases are not being reported, so there’s no way of knowing the incidence.”
Britain ended contact tracing last week, while Denmark and Finland are among other nations that have scaled back their programs. New York City announced yesterday that it was ending its main contact-tracing program in April.
The original goal of contact tracing in the U.S. was to reach people who had spent more than 15 minutes within six feet of an infected person and ask them to quarantine at home voluntarily for two weeks, even if they tested negative. The aim was to reduce transmission while case investigators raced to identify clusters that required health department intervention.
But from the start of the pandemic, contact-tracing efforts struggled with spotty testing and long delays in results. The system required trust — something that was sorely lacking in many areas because governments neglected testing services and failed to guarantee that people would be housed, fed and paid while they isolated. As the virus spread widely, contact tracing became an almost pointless exercise.
Now the C.D.C. is pushing health departments to focus tracing efforts on high-risk settings like long-term care facilities, shelters jails and prisons. Some experts are worried that the new guidance might lead to a dismantling of much-needed infrastructure.
However, my colleague Adeel Hassan, a national reporter, said that if there is another pandemic in the future, “we wouldn’t be starting from scratch, at least.”
“Every state had some level of contact tracing, along with thousands of counties, so that experience and knowledge should benefit all levels of government and public health officials during the next emergency,” he said.
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The original goal of contact tracing in the U.S. was to reach people who had spent more than 15 minutes within six feet of an infected person and ask them to quarantine at home voluntarily for two weeks, even if they tested negative. The aim was to reduce transmission while case investigators raced to identify clusters that required health department intervention. |
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But from the start of the pandemic, contact-tracing efforts struggled with spotty testing and long delays in results. The system required trust — something that was sorely lacking in many areas because governments neglected testing services and failed to guarantee that people would be housed, fed and paid while they isolated. As the virus spread widely, contact tracing became an almost pointless exercise. |
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Now the C.D.C. is pushing health departments to focus tracing efforts on high-risk settings like long-term care facilities, shelters jails and prisons. Some experts are worried that the new guidance might lead to a dismantling of much-needed infrastructure. |
|
However, my colleague Adeel Hassan, a national reporter, said that if there is another pandemic in the future, “we wouldn’t be starting from scratch, at least.” |
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“Every state had some level of contact tracing, along with thousands of counties, so that experience and knowledge should benefit all levels of government and public health officials during the next emergency,” he said. |