Strategies including social distancing, telework and avoiding large crowds should be practiced by all Americans, including members of Congress, to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, said top federal health officials during a reconvened hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Really sick employees, for instance, should stay home, advised Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
For companies located in areas with high numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases, Redfield said that employees should be encouraged to telework if possible, while others should practice social distancing, which means being 6-feet away from any other individual, including at restaurants, the workplace and sporting events.
And anyone who has just returned from abroad, such as from France or Italy, he said, should stay home and self-quarantine for 14 days.
“We’re not advocating for the use of these [coronavirus] tests in a broad way in the absence of a relationship with a physician or public health official to make that determination,” Redfield told U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) during Thursday’s portion of a two-day hearing held by the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Redfield was answering questions from Rep. Norman, who said he had spoken with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that was considering whether to just start conducting its own coronavirus testing of employees, though potential liabilities were keeping the firm from doing so.
Looking around the hearing room, Rep. Norman said there were about 80 people present. “I don’t know who’s got what in this room,” he said. “Walk me through the likelihood of anyone in this room getting the virus, assuming somebody here has the symptoms.”
The real risk now, Redfield said, is that 70 percent of newly confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus have originated in Europe, which he dubbed “the new China,” referencing where the disease outbreak first occurred. He said that’s the very reason why President Donald Trump last night announced a ban on flights from Europe that starts on Friday.
“The issue is, in the spirit of staying ahead of the game, right now we should be doing things that separate us as best as possible from people who might be infected,” testified Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
Fauci said he learned today that access to the nation’s Capitol is now being limited. “That’s a really, really good idea to do,” said Fauci.
“I know you like to meet and press the flesh with your constituency,” Fauci told the committee members, “but I think you really need to cool it for a while because we should be practicing mitigation, even in areas that don’t have a dramatic increase.”
And while the CDC-posted guidelines online may seem simplistic, he added, they should be followed because “they’re really important.”
The Trump administration health officials — who began testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday before being called away to a meeting at the White House — returned on Thursday to complete their testimonies.
The health officials and lawmakers both reiterated that the federal government’s current system for testing coronavirus is failing.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the committee’s chairwoman, said the coronavirus “crisis is evolving quickly.”
“Since our hearing yesterday, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic,” Maloney said. “The CDC has now reported that we have 1,000 confirmed cases. That is up from 100 reported cases a week ago — a 900 percent increase.
“Americans are worried; they are scared,” she said, calling on the health officials to just state the facts during their testimonies.
Maloney said that the Trump administration’s testing for coronavirus has been severely inadequate and plagued by missteps that have resulted in substantial deficiencies in the federal government being able to determine who may be infected.
As a result, Maloney said that the United States is falling behind other nations. For example, she pointed to Redfield’s testimony previously that the CDC has tested about 4,900 people. In comparison, South Korea tested more than 66,000 people within one week of its first case of community transmission and to date has tested more than 196,000 people. “They can test 15,000 people a day,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) asked Redfield who in the Trump administration is in charge of making sure that as many people as possible across this country have access to testing — especially healthcare workers and first responders.
“The system is not really geared to what we need right now, what you are asking for,” Fauci told Rep. Wasserman Schultz in an effort to support Redfield, who did not identify anyone. “That is a failing. Let’s admit it.
“The fact is, the way the system was set up is that the public health component … was a system where you put it out there in the public and a physician asks for [testing] and you get it,” said Fauci. “The idea of anybody getting it easily — the way people in other countries are doing it — we’re not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes, but we’re not.”
“That’s really disturbing,” Wasserman Schultz responded, “and I really appreciate the information.”
Several other lawmakers raised concerns about the testing of vulnerable populations of Americans, including those with pre-existing or underlying conditions, the uninsured, homeless people, prisoners, and the elderly.
After working up a chart on a whiteboard showing the overall costs associated with a person being tested for the coronavirus, U.S. Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) hammered Redfield until he committed to ensuring every American’s test would be covered, regardless of whether the person is insured.
“You have the authority” under current U.S. Code, Porter told the doctor, “you don’t need to operationalize anything. You just need to commit to it.”
After the hearing, Porter tweeted: “I did the math: a full battery of coronavirus testing costs at minimum $1,331. I also did the legal research: the Administration has the authority to make testing free for every American TODAY. I secured a commitment from a high-level Trump official that they’d actually do it.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) asked what the CDC is doing about the 2.3 million Americans in jails around the country, which she called “a breeding ground for infectious diseases.”
Rep. Pressley specifically asked Redfield if CDC guidance for federal prisons regarding the coronavirus has been made available; the CDC director responded that he would report back to her.
Dr. Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, testified about the nation’s current lack of respirator masks, specifically N95 respirator masks that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and filter out about 95 percent of airborne particles.
In fact, the shortage of these specialized masks prompted the CDC on March 10 to post new guidelines stating that “the supply chain of respirators cannot meet demand” and that looser fitting surgical face masks “are an acceptable alternative.”
“There’s a great demand for personal protective equipment, such as the N95 respirators,” said Kadlec. “We have a limited supply in our Strategic National Stockpile. Annually, about 350 million respirators are used. Only a small percentage of that is used by the healthcare industry, about 35 million.
“We believe the demand for that could be several hundred million to up to a billion in a six-month period, so it’s a very high-demand item,” he said.
The new CDC strategy, Kadlec explained, allows for the utilization in medical settings of non-medical masks, such as those used in manufacturing, mining and construction.
While these masks aren’t the same as the N95 respirators, Kadlec said they may be used in the same way.
However, Kadlec also noted that the current lack of liability provisions in existing law is preventing manufacturers from selling them to the medical industry.
Kadlec advised that existing law should be modified to include language that permits such respiratory protective devices to be used for such a purpose.
“That’s a significant, critical, must-pass-now item,” he told the committee members.