The United States should not expect the coronavirus outbreak to wane over the summer, White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx said Tuesday.
“None of us can be lulled into this false sense of security that the cases may go down this summer,” Birx said in a discussion with the German Marshall Fund president during the organization’s Brussels Forum webcast. She added that American leaders are preparing actively for the possibility of finding and containing future outbreaks through contact tracing and proactive surveillance.
Much of that will come from state and city efforts to trace contacts and implement surveillance, she acknowledged. Several states have struggled to stand up their own contact tracing programs; others such as New York expect to hire thousands of people to track cases.
“Europe needs to be preparing exactly the same way,” Birx said. “No country, no matter what approach that they have taken, have resulted in enough immunity to protect their population if the virus comes back in the fall.”
She said the pandemic, which has infected more than 6 million people worldwide, has been a “wake-up call” for the developed world on the resources and coordination needed to fight a global disease outbreak. Her comments come four days after President Donald Trump pledged to pull out of the World Health Organization and cut off all funding.
“Our supply chains were not made for that kind of dramatic surge and they weren’t anywhere in the world,” Birx said. “The level of stress on the supply chain to the developed world was equal if not greater to the stress I have experienced in resource-limited settings. The things that we ran out of or came close to running out of — it was shocking to me.”
The Trump administration has faced withering criticism from both the global community and U.S. states of its efforts to shore up protective gear during the crisis. International organizations have accused the U.S. of attempting to hijack shipments and fueling a scramble for supplies. In the U.S., states have competed for equipment on the open market, sometimes bidding against the federal government for gear.
Developed countries need to work together this summer to stem future shortages of key supplies such as masks by stockpiling and building redundancy so that supplies come from multiple sources, said Birx, who also serves as the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator. “We cannot go into another potential threat situation without diversification of the supply chain.”
Birx said communication with European health leaders aided U.S. efforts to contain the virus, because cases ramped up significantly in Europe roughly two weeks before the U.S. outbreak began. “Our European health colleagues gave us the ability to understand this virus in a way we weren’t able to get from other countries at the beginning of the pandemic,” she said.
But Birx said the response might have been different if countries had known earlier about a crucial aspect of the virus’ behavior. “I think if we have known the level of asymptomatic spread both in Europe and in the United States it would have changed policy,” she said. “Not knowing that until it hits your borders I think is a very difficult thing.”
The task force leader also discussed the prospect for distributing an eventual coronavirus vaccine, saying the government would start with individuals most likely to get the disease because “we know who is most vulnerable” and “will make sure they are first on the vaccine list.”
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/02/deborah-birx-coronavirus-outbreak-summer-296490
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