Name: Former CDC official responds to coronavirus containment and testing
Uploaded: 2020-03-10T01:51:49.000Z
Duration: 4 min 45 s
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as we know this virus is rapidly spreading across the country and around the world.

A big question is how do we track and stop that spread for more on the medical and public health response to this growing outbreak?

Bring in Dr Seema Yasmin, the director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative and former CDC epidemic detective.

Let's say we just heard from HHS Secretary a czar and he said, I want to quote There is no testing kit shortage.

There has never been a time when tests were unavailable.

Do you agree we're not seeing any evidence of that?

So far, it looks like less than 1900 Americans have been tested on.

Let's contrast that with countries like South Korea, where more than 140,000 have already been tested Now.

On Monday, FDA Commissioner hard holders about a 1,000,000 test kits would be available by the end of today.

On then, on Wednesday, we were told by Vice President Pence that one of the heart from Indian test would be available, and yet we're not seeing this happen in reality.

The number of Americans who may actually walking around with the virus may be many more than the 1900 were actually being told.

And the other issue here is that at the beginning of this epidemic, there was a lot of concern about the potential lack of transparency from Chinese officials on.

Actually, What we're seeing here is a potential lack of transparency from American public health officials.

S job to do this, counting on a national level, we've seen the numbers disappear from the CDC website.

So now if you look at the CDC website says about 100 Americans have tested positive.

But if you look at the scientists collecting the data from all over the state, it's more than 200.

So you think that there is an issue of transparency here?

It totally looks like that and so far states reporting on their own websites.

But that requires you going to 50 different websites on I usedto work, a state health department.

That data wouldn't be published on a daily basis.

It's really CDC is job to collect that data on a national level of making available in one place on.

We've seen that information sometimes, and it's disappeared, and now it's not there with full transparency.

How do you go about tracking down at particular person, who you believe has the Corona virus and then everybody else that they may have come in contact with?

So we call that kind of detective work contact tracing on.

It's really 19th century public health measures, its boots on the ground.

It's interviewing people who might be quite scared and panicked.

And I'm not stigma around the infection in the epidemic.

And you're saying to them, Look, have you had any symptoms like this?

And you're keeping down a list of all the people that they may have come into contact with and then trying to find out if those people are sick and who they came into contact with?

So you're building this fighters, weapons networks that gets wider and wider.

We're seeing with this investigation even in Illinois, there are some individuals who, perhaps while they had symptoms, came into contact with more than 150 people.

I'm particularly interested in this case in in Westchester County and the man got on a train.

So how do you then tracked down the people who may have been on that train car with him?

It could be a huge task, and it can sometimes feel impossible.

Might be easier with a plane where you have a flight manifest with train people buying paper tickets.

You can't even always track like you could with Elektronik passes.

It is possible having testing kits actually available makes your job easier because you know who's positive on who's not.

You know, we've seen already thousands of people here who are self quarantine.

Do you feel that the government should step in and make that Maur mandatory?

Has actually met mandated some federal quarantine, so those Americans who were evacuated from hot spots on then quarantined on military bases have to say that's quite extraordinary to see in 2020 the last time we saw that was about 60 years ago during the smallpox era.

In terms of those massive quarantines we saw in China, with tens of millions infected, that likely wouldn't be possible in any other part of the world.

There's a authoritarian government there that makes that possible.

I don't think you can necessarily replicate that in any other country and just curious going back to when you're tracking down the people.

It's absolutely urgent that you get people to be honest with you, give you that information thatyou, contest them ideally and find that information out.

But you're trying to build trust a very tricky situation on you're trying to find out everybody that they came into contact with and everybody that they came into contact with, sometimes as well, really fascinating stuff.

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