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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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This is reassuring:

https://www.axios.com/cdc-lab-coronavirus-contaminated-6dc9726d-dea3-423f-b5ad-eb7b1e44c2e2.html?stream=top&utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alerts_all

 

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A top federal scientist sounded the alarm about what he feared was contamination in an Atlanta lab where the government made test kits for the coronavirus, according to sources familiar with the situation in Atlanta.

The Trump administration has ordered an independent investigation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab, and manufacturing of the virus test kits has been moved, the sources said.

 

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At the time the administration is under scrutiny for its early preparations for the virus, the potential problems at the lab became a top internal priority for some officials. But the Trump administration did not talk publicly about the Food and Drug Administration’s specific concerns about the Atlanta lab.

Senior officials are still not saying exactly what the FDA regulator found at the Atlanta lab.

The CDC lab in Atlanta developed the testing formula for the coronavirus test — which the government says works — and was manufacturing relatively small amounts of testing kits for laboratories around the country. This is where the lab ran into problems, per sources familiar with the situation.

 

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FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said, in a statement to Axios, that government agencies have already worked together to resolve the problems with the coronavirus tests.

“Upon learning about the test issue from CDC, FDA worked with CDC to determine that problems with certain test components were due to a manufacturing issue,” he said. 

“We worked hand in hand with CDC to resolve the issues with manufacturing. FDA has confidence in the design and current manufacturing of the test that already have and are continuing to be distributed. These tests have passed extensive quality control procedures and will provide the high-level of diagnostic accuracy we need during this coronavirus outbreak.”

 

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The FDA says it now has full confidence in the coronavirus diagnostic kit, but a slew of new cases announced over the weekend suggest the virus has spread throughout the country while the U.S. government tested only a narrow subset of the population for it.

The U.S. government had admitted to problems with its diagnostic tests — which have put the U.S. well behind China and South Korea in doing large-scale testing of the American public for the coronavirus. 

But the U.S. has now tested more than 3,600 people for the virus, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

Spoiler

It was not immediately clear if or how possible contamination in the Atlanta lab played a role in delays or problems with testing. Nor was it clear how significant or systemic the contamination concerns may be; whether it was a one-time issue that’s easily resolved, or a broader concern involving protocols, safeguards or leadership.

Behind the scenes: The FDA official who visited the Atlanta lab, Timothy Stenzel, is the director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health. 

About a week ago, when the Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar was under extreme pressure over the delays in getting coronavirus testing kits to market, Stenzel traveled to Atlanta to help troubleshoot whatever technical problems might have been occurring with the tests.

Stenzel was alarmed by the procedures he witnessed in the Atlanta laboratory and raised concerns with multiple CDC officials, per a source familiar with the situation in Atlanta.

Stenzel is a highly-regarded scientist and diagnostics expert. He was on the ground in Atlanta to deal with technical issues and happened to stumble upon the inappropriate procedures and possible contaminants. He is not a laboratory inspector and thus was not charged with producing an inspection report on the lab conditions.

But he raised the concerns and they have been taken seriously and risen to the highest levels of the U.S. government.

On Thursday afternoon, the concerns about the Atlanta laboratory were raised in a conference call that included senior government officials from multiple agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. 

The call’s purpose was to figure out ways to mass produce the testing kits and get them to market quickly. 

The Trump administration says it’s now figured out how to get over those hurdles. An HHS spokesperson promised that by the end of this week, “we will have the capacity to test up to 75,000 individuals” for the coronavirus

What's next: The FDA’s manufacturing concerns — which include the possible contamination of testing kits — have also resulted in the Trump administration ordering an independent investigation of the CDC’s Atlanta laboratory, according to senior officials.

“HHS has launched an investigation and is assembling a team of non-CDC scientists to better understand the nature and source of the manufacturing defect in the first batch of COVID-19 test kits that were distributed to state health departments and others,” said an HHS spokesperson. 

“HHS/CDC have been transparent with the American people regarding the issue with the manufacturing of the diagnostic and will be transparent with the findings of this investigation.” (But the administration was not transparent about the senior FDA official's concerns about the conditions and procedures in the Atlanta laboratory.)

A senior administration official added that the government also moved the manufacturing of the coronavirus tests out of the Atlanta laboratory of CDC. 

The official said that the CDC engaged with a third party contractor on Feb. 20 to help manufacture the testing kits. The official added that the FDA regulator, Stenzel, visited the Atlanta laboratory on Feb. 22.

Between the lines: Until Thursday, the CDC’s guidance was to only test Americans for the coronavirus if they’d recently traveled to China — or had close contact with someone known to have the virus — and were symptomatic.

Under this policy, the CDC initially refused to test a California patient who didn’t fit this criteria but had the coronavirus, although the CDC disputes that it denied doctors’ testing request. 

As of Friday, South Korea had tested 65,000 people for the coronavirus; the U.S. had tested only 459, per Science Magazine. China can reportedly conduct up to 1.6 million tests a week.

Although the World Health Organization has sent testing kits to 57 other countries, the U.S. decided to make its own.

There have also been problems with the tests themselves. On Feb. 12, the FDA announced that health labs across the country were having problems validating the CDC's diagnostic test, Science reports in an in-depth account of what went wrong with the tests.

The FDA announced yesterday that public health labs can create their own diagnostic test. Scott Becker, the CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told Science that he expects that public health labs will be able to do 10,000 tests a day by the end of the week.

 

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8 minutes ago, Ellellelle said:
23 minutes ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:
China bumped the death rate up to around 7%.  I'm guessing outside epidemiologists now have enough access that they can no longer hide the ball.

Wait, what? You have a source?

Johns Hopkins website has mainland China at 2,761 on 79,826 for 3.59%

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30 minutes ago, Updawg said:

Yeah, I've had some funky cold the past week- no fever.

If I have it, the good news is it's not too bad, the bad news is I've spread it to a shit load of people

 

You know who was at my office the week before I got sick?  A group of four or five South Koreans.  Who probably flew KAL on the way over.

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31 minutes ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

China bumped the death rate up to around 7%.  I'm guessing outside epidemiologists now have enough access that they can no longer hide the ball.

Don’t know about the rate, but this was interesting - WHO putting together some info on the limited access they had. 

This has the link to the PDF and Video of the press conference

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fbt49e/the_who_sent_25_international_experts_to_china/

  • 5% of people who are diagnosed with Covid require artificial respiration. Another 15% need to breathe in highly concentrated oxygen - and not just for a few days. The duration from the beginning of the disease until recovery is 3 to 6 weeks on average for these severe and critical patients (compared to only 2 weeks for the mildly ill). The mass and duration of the treatments overburdened the existing health care system in Wuhan many times over. The province of Hubei, whose capital is Wuhan, had 65,596 infected persons so far. A total of 40,000 employees were sent to Hubei from other provinces to help fight the epidemic. 45 hospitals in Wuhan are caring for Covid patients, 6 of which are for patients in critical condition and 39 are caring for seriously ill patients and for infected people over the age of 65. Two makeshift hospitals with 2,600 beds were built within a short time. 80% of the infected have mild disease, ten temporary hospitals were set up in gymnasiums and exhibition halls for those.

  • The vast majority of those infected sooner or later develop symptoms. Cases of people in whom the virus has been detected and who do not have symptoms at that time are rare - and most of them fall ill in the next few days.

  • The most common symptoms are fever (88%) and dry cough (68%). Exhaustion (38%), expectoration of mucus when coughing (33%), shortness of breath (18%), sore throat (14%), headaches (14%), muscle aches (14%), chills (11%) are also common. Less frequent are nausea and vomiting (5%), stuffy nose (5%) and diarrhoea (4%). Running nose is not a symptom of Covid.

  • An examination of 44,672 infected people in China showed a fatality rate of 3.4%. Fatality is strongly influenced by age, pre-existing conditions, gender, and especially the response of the health care system. All fatality figures reflect the state of affairs in China up to 17 February, and everything could be quite different in the future elsewhere.

  • Healthcare system: 20% of infected people in China needed hospital treatment for weeks. China has hospital beds to treat 0.4% of the population at the same time - other developed countries have between 0.1% and 1.3% and most of these beds are already occupied with people who have other diseases. The most important thing is firstly to aggressively contain the spread of the virus in order to keep the number of seriously ill Covid patients low and secondly to increase the number of beds (including material and personnel) until there is enough for the seriously ill. China also tested various treatment methods for the unknown disease and the most successful ones were implemented nationwide. Thanks to this response, the fatality rate in China is now lower than a month ago.

  • Pre-existing conditions: The fatality rate for those infected with pre-existing cardiovascular disease in China was 13.2%. It was 9.2% for those infected with high blood sugar levels (uncontrolled diabetes), 8.4% for high blood pressure, 8% for chronic respiratory diseases and 7.6% for cancer. Infected persons without a relevant previous illness died in 1.4% of cases.

Whole lot more info from the report, including tables on ages, etc. at the link above.  

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1 hour ago, Deej said:

Same. I never get sick. Weird respiratory stuff that past week or so that I shook. Others in the office still fighting it, but all in their 60's or older.

Me too.  I was even going to cancel my weekly visit to the old folks home, but figured the joy I bring them is too important so I toughed it out.

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That WHO report is fucking terrifying.  It implies that China threw everything it had, in terms of health care resources, at Wuhan and thus kept the death rate artificially low.  

If this thing goes broader, that rate will skyrocket.  Almost everyone who gets the virus shows symptoms eventually.  And 20% of those need intensive hospital care.  We have ICU capacity for something like only 1% of the population.     

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19 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

That WHO report is fucking terrifying.  It implies that China threw everything it had, in terms of health care resources, at Wuhan and thus kept the death rate artificially low.  

If this thing goes broader, that rate will skyrocket.  Almost everyone who gets the virus shows symptoms eventually.  And 20% of those need intensive hospital care.  We have ICU capacity for something like only 1% of the population.     

Might be a little more relevant to see what it does to a population with an average air quality and % of smokers similar to ours, given that this virus attacks the lungs. South Korea is similar to China in both those aspects. 
 

And that same WHO report is saying that the virus is already on a steady decline in China. “Fucking terrifying” didn’t really come to mind when I read that. 

Edited by Helobious
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35 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

That WHO report is fucking terrifying.  It implies that China threw everything it had, in terms of health care resources, at Wuhan and thus kept the death rate artificially low.  

If this thing goes broader, that rate will skyrocket.  Almost everyone who gets the virus shows symptoms eventually.  And 20% of those need intensive hospital care.  We have ICU capacity for something like only 1% of the population.     

The death rate in China outside of Hubei Provence is half what it is inside. 

i expect that the actual number of infected in Hubei is at least an order of magnitude higher than the confirmed number. Which would still only be 1.2% of the population. 

I think what they are seeing in the hospitals is the worst cases of a much larger outbreak. 

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I made a run to the local Walmart to stock up on non-perishables.  It was busy, but the checkout lady said no more than normal.  They had plenty of zinc lozenges, but not enough of of my preferred granola flavor.  

A question.  I know people exposed need to be quarantined 14 days, as it can take that long to show symptoms.  But how long is a person contagious after they have it?  Ie, I get sick tomorrow, and obviously self-quarantine.  I am mildly sick for 3 days, then feel pretty good.  For the regular flu, I'd probably go back to work.  In this case I'd need to stay home until I was no longer contagious.  How long is that?  How long is a person contagious after infection? 

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1 minute ago, Parliament said:

 

A question.  I know people exposed need to be quarantined 14 days, as it can take that long to show symptoms.  But how long is a person contagious after they have it?  Ie, I get sick tomorrow, and obviously self-quarantine.  I am mildly sick for 3 days, then feel pretty good.  For the regular flu, I'd probably go back to work.  In this case I'd need to stay home until I was no longer contagious.  How long is that?  How long is a person contagious after infection? 

Yeah, I've never figured out what "recovered" means except maybe a negative test?  Don't think we have that kind of info yet.

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14 minutes ago, Bevo Num1 said:
16 minutes ago, Xian said:
Just got back from heb. Pure chaos. Close to hurricane in the gulf levels 

The one in Kyle seemed normal yesterday. Sundays are always crazy.

That might be the case then. I don’t normally shop on Sundays. 
 

that said they were very low on water and most people had a pallet or two in their cart  

 

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The target I went to yesterday was completely out of hand sanitizer. I saw several people with carts full of water. The grocery store I went to today was completely out of bottle water.
 

overall I’d say it was a lot of calm prepping. I expect once the confirmed cases start doubling with regularity the madness amps up quickly. 

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2 minutes ago, Somnio said:

So tomorrow is when testing in the US is supposed to really ramp up.  

How quickly do we see the results?  Does it take a few days, or is it pretty much immediate?

They were telling the cruise patients 48 hours for results. 

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9 minutes ago, heso said:

The target I went to yesterday was completely out of hand sanitizer. I saw several people with carts full of water. The grocery store I went to today was completely out of bottle water.
 

overall I’d say it was a lot of calm prepping. I expect once the confirmed cases start doubling with regularity the madness amps up quickly. 

Why are people stockpiling water? Is there worry that things get so bad that the water supply becomes compromised?

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2 hours ago, Ellellelle said:

What will this do to the obese population? I have been wondering for weeks if my lazy af co-worker is doomed.

Its a disease that targets the lungs so all smokers have a better shot at pushing daisies first.  

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Why the fuck are people buying bottled water? What, the water treatment plant operators gonna die? I mean, let’s assume that everyone catches this virus, but only one out of five falls seriously ill. That still leaves four out of every five water treatment plant operators available. Maybe two out of those five are out of commission for a few days. Still. I don’t see how the water supply is gonna be interrupted.

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