Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Spotty Data, Flawed Testing, Undercounted Deaths Create Misleading Picture Of Outbreak In States
Politico: Bad State Data Hides Coronavirus Threat As Trump Pushes Reopening
Federal and state officials across the country have altered or hidden public health data crucial to tracking the coronavirus' spread, hindering the ability to detect a surge of infections as President Donald Trump pushes the nation to reopen rapidly. In at least a dozen states, health departments have inflated testing numbers or deflated death tallies by changing criteria for who counts as a coronavirus victim and what counts as a coronavirus test, according to reporting from POLITICO, other news outlets and the states' own admissions. (Tahir and Cancryn, 5/27)
The Associated Press: Tennessee To Halt Sharing COVID-19 Patient Data
Tennessee will soon stop providing the names and addresses of COVID-19 patients to first responders, after initially arguing that doing so would protect those on the front line. Gov. Bill Lee’s administration decided on the change this week, conceding that the data may have created a false sense of security to those responding to emergency calls. The data sharing will stop at the end of the month. (Kruesi, 5/27)
Stat: Experts Decry FDA's Decision To Halt Seattle Covid-19 Study Over Approvals
Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration told STAT the agency’s decision this month to halt a high-profile, Bill Gates-backed effort to study the spread of coronavirus in the Seattle area came after the researchers involved failed to secure needed approval. The program, called the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, or SCAN, was initially focused on studying the flu but quickly pivoted to track the coronavirus at the outset of the pandemic, making inroads in tracking the spread of the virus and attracting high-profile support from companies like shipping giant Amazon, whose health care arm picked up and delivered Covid-19 tests to healthy and infected people. But the FDA stopped the effort suddenly last week, the New York Times reported. (Brodwin, 5/27)
The Hill: Health Officials Nervously Eye Emerging Hotspots
Public health officials are nervously eyeing cities that may become the next epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic as new models point to increased rates of transmission. The fact that restless Americans are now emerging from lockdowns to resume something approximating normal life is only exacerbating those concerns. While the number of new coronavirus cases is declining in New York, Seattle and other focal points of the first wave of cases, models are predicting that cases could skyrocket in the next two weeks in cities like Houston, Dallas, Nashville, Tenn., and Memphis, Tenn., creating new epicenters. (Wilson, 5/27)
CNN: What A Second Peak Of Coronavirus Could Look Like
Coronavirus will surge again when summer ends; infectious disease experts are almost certain of that. But they don't know how severe that resurgence will be. The World Health Organization offered one bleak hypothesis for what the next few months of coronavirus could look like. While we're still living through the first wave of the pandemic, and cases are still rising, infections could jump up suddenly and significantly "at any time." (Andrew, 5/27)
Reuters: Factbox: Where States Stand As U.S. Reaches 100,000 Coronavirus Deaths
Below are summaries of how the states and the District of Columbia are coming back from the economic slowdown they orchestrated to combat the pandemic, based on Reuters reporting, a Reuters tally of infections and deaths as of Wednesday, and data compiled by the National Governors Association. (Szekely, 5/27)
Stat: Wastewater Testing Gains Support As Early Warning For Covid-19
What only a month ago had been merely an intriguing laboratory finding about analyzing wastewater to detect the virus that causes Covid-19 has quickly leapt to the threshold of real-world use. With swab tests still plagued by capacity issues, inaccuracy, and slow turnaround, testing wastewater for the novel coronavirus’ genetic signature could give communities a faster way to spot a rebound in cases — as soon as this fall. (Begley, 5/28)
Kaiser Health News: Antibody Tests Were Hailed As Way To End Lockdowns. Instead, They Cause Confusion.
Aspen was an early COVID-19 hot spot in Colorado, with a cluster of cases in March linked to tourists visiting for its world-famous skiing. Tests were in short supply, making it difficult to know how the virus was spreading. So in April, when the Pitkin County Public Health Department announced it had obtained 1,000 COVID-19 antibody tests that it would offer residents at no charge, it seemed like an exciting opportunity to evaluate the efforts underway to stop the spread of the virus. (Aschwanden, 5/28)
Stat: San Francisco Testing Blitz Shows Covid-19 Hit Mostly Low-Wage Workers
Early in the coronavirus outbreak, as the first infected patients trickled into Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Diane Havlir noticed a troubling trend. Most were Latinx, most were men, and most were young. The infectious disease specialist wanted to understand why — and what it meant about how this new virus was traveling through her city. (McFarling, 5/28)
