Trump shows off new rapid coronavirus test kit in Rose Garden, as HHS says 1 million Americans tested

‘Historic milestone’: President Trump announces that over 1 million Americans have been tested

By Andrew O’Reilly, FOX NEWS

President Trump and the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] announced Monday that the United States has tested over 1 million people for the coronavirus, as the president unveiled a new rapid test kit for the contagion aimed at providing results within five minutes.

Speaking from the White House’s Rose Garden, Trump said that reaching 1 million tests is “a milestone in our war against the coronavirus.”

Trump’s announcement on the new rapid test kit from Abbott Laboratories comes just days after the company said that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had given them emergency clearance to produce its cartridge-based test. The company says that its test delivers a negative result in 13 minutes when the virus is not detected.

Also during the press conference, Trump also announced that Ford is repurposing an auto parts factory west of Detroit to start building simple ventilators to treat coronavirus patients.

The automaker says that starting the week of April 20, it expects to produce 50,000 ventilators in 100 days. The plant in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, would have the ability to build 30,000 per month after that. Ford also is working with GE Healthcare to double production of a more sophisticated ventilator at a factory in Madison, Wisconsin.

Trump reiterated the need to practice socially distancing on Monday as experts warned that the peak number deaths from the virus is likely to occur sometime next month.

“By very vigorously socially distancing, we can save more than one million American lives,” he said. “The sacrifices we make will determine the fate of this virus and the fate of our victory.”

Trump noted that his administration’s guidelines — which he has extended through April — will not change much in substance though they “may be toughened up a bit,” while adding that the restrictions on travel to foreign countries will also remain.

The press conference was not without conflict: Trump got into a verbal scuffle with CNN’s Jim Acosta for asking a “nasty, snarky question” about his downplaying of the severity of the virus before the outbreak struck the U.S. The president said he didn’t want to cause a panic in the country, and that he was very proud of the work done by everyone on the White House coronavirus task force.

The United States has been trying for weeks to ramp up coronavirus testing after a series of problems with the initial government-designed test and widespread criticism over the U.S. lagging behind countries like South Korea in testing. The nation’s daily testing capacity has been increasing as more diagnostic makers and large laboratories have developed tests.

During the press conference, the president opened a box from Abbott Laboratories, displaying the new rapid test for the press to see.

Abbott’s testing cartridge fits into the company’s portable ID NOW device, which is used at hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices. The company said it would launch the test next week to select health-care facilities delivering urgent care.

The Abbott approval follows two other rapid tests cleared by regulators in the past week. Older laboratory-developed tests can take between 4 to 8 hours to deliver results.

Health experts have said the U.S. should be testing 100,000 to 150,000 people per day to track and contain the virus. There are no official nationwide testing metrics, but private and public health labs currently have reported testing about 80,000 to 90,000 patients per day.

CORONAVIRUS IN THE US: STATE-BY-STATE BREAKDOWN

The U.S. currently leads the world in the number of infections, with more than 143,000 confirmed cases being reported by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. More than 73,000 of the confirmed cases are centered in New York and New Jersey.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an urgent appeal for medical volunteers Monday amid a “staggering” number of deaths from the coronavirus, as he and health officials warned that the crisis unfolding in New York City was just a preview of what other communities across the U.S. could soon face.

“Please come help us in New York now,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said as the state’s death toll climbed by more than 250 in a single day for a total of more than 1,200 victims, most of them in the city. He said an additional 1 million health-care workers would be needed to tackle the crisis.

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“We’ve lost over 1,000 New Yorkers,” Cuomo said. “To me, we’re beyond staggering already. We’ve reached staggering.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert, on Monday warned that smaller cities are likely about to see cases “take off” the way they have in New York City.

Trump’s press briefing on Monday comes a day after he extended the federal guidelines on social distancing until April 30. He had earlier predicted that the country could open up around Easter, which happens on April 12, but sided with public health experts to extend the guidelines.

“The economy is number two, my focus is saving people’s lives,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to that report.

March 31, 2020 | 19 Comments »

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19 Comments / 19 Comments

  2. @ Reader: Sounds like the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” coming true in real life. In the story, none of the King’s advisors or any of the leading men of the kingdom realized that the Emperor was naked. It took a small boy to point it out before the people realized he was naked.

    I hope there is a “small boy” somewhere out there the American people will listen to.

  3. @ Shmuel Mohalever:
    “it would enable the government to learn”
    I would think that the government has at its disposal so many experts, think tanks, advisors, etc. that this idea should have occurred to SOMEONE there by now.
    Right now, it seems that they much prefer the road to hell to the road to reason.

  4. A second idea that I have had is to test people who are reporting symptoms of a respiratory infection for a “basket” of known pathogens, both viral and bacterial. Blood tests that test people for several, even many, things at once are commonplace and easy to administer and analyze. Since many people may be getting sick from a large number of other pathogens in addition to the COVID-19 virus, such a broad-spectrum test will make a more precise determination of how much at risk the individual is. It would also enable the medical authorities to make a more accorate assessment of whether the COVID 19 virus is a uniquely disastrous threat, or just one of many infectious agents that is contributing to a seasonal epidemic. If the first possibility is confirmed, then present restrictions and advisories would have to remain in place for some time. But if the second, less frightening possibility turns out to be thecase, some easing of restrictions and more reassuring measages from the government should begin.

  5. Another advantage to my proposal would be that it would enable the government to learn whether or not there is a uniquely terrible coronavirus pandemic or rather a seasonal infectious disease epidemic that is within the “normal” range of the seasonal epidemics of the past ten years or so. If that turned out to be the case, it necessarily mean that all restrictions on businesses, workers, the ill, those at high risk, etc. should be lifted immediately. It is best to err on the side of caution in this situation. But if it did turn out that the present assumptions about the severity of the “outbreak” are overblown, it would send a measure of reassurance to both the general population and the business community that is badly needed to end the climate of depression and fear pervading the nation. And lifting this psychological cloud is necessary to enable us to dig ourselves out of the current severe recession.

    FDR’s dictum that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” has never been more true.

  6. What’s needed is a study that tests a large, representative sample of the general population for coronavirus, even if they have not had any symptoms of respiratory infectious illness. The survey would reveal how many people, in which age groups , have acquired immunity to the disease. This in turn would reveal what percentage of the working age population can be allowed back to work.

    People who then desire to go back to work would then be tested for immunity to the disease by local health workers. If they pass, they will be given a certificate, available on-line from a government website to avoid fraud, that will inform employers that they are work-eligible and not being quarantined.

    Yes, this would cost a lot of money. But only a tiny percentage of what the government is throwing at the problem now. And more effective inending both the health and economic crises.

  7. @ Shmuel Mohalever:
    Look I know you have different view point on the dangerous of the Covid-19. I accept that. It does not influence me and do not wish to debate it. So please do not direct your views on this subject to me.

    I do not wish to be rude so I hope you do not take offense.

  9. “120,748Seasonal flu deaths this year” A slight correction of my earlier report: This is the number of flu deaths so far this year,not for previous entire years. That is three times the number of people who are reported to have died from coronavirus this year.

    I have been unable to find any information on the Worldometer site about the number of deaths from pneumonia this year or previous years. But another disease reporting site gives the figure of 2.3 million deaths annually. Even if we assume that (reported) deaths from coronavirus continue at their present pace throughout the entire year, that would still mean that approximately fourteen times more people will die of pneumonia.

  13. @ Bear Klein: I did study the Worldometer site, Bear. Some of the information on it suggests, to me at any rate, that the severity of the Coronavirus epidemic has been overblown, while the severity of other epidemics that are concurrent with it have not received enough attention. In particular, I noticed that total wolrdwide deaths from “communicable diseases total 3,211,103 worldwide every year. Influenza deaths worldwide total 120,528. Coronavirus deaths are given as 38, 990.

    Another health reporting site, Ourworlddata.com, states that there are 256 milliondeaths from pneumonia every year worldwide. 1.13 million of these deaths are of elderly people. One third are of children under five years old. (Very few coronavirus deaths reported for this age group).

    A third disease-reporting site,nchstats.com, says that pneumonia deaths in the United States over the past ten years averaged 57,688 per year. As you have pointed out, deaths attributed to coronavirus as of today are a little over 3 thousand. Since nearly all people whose deaths are attributed to coronavirus exhibited symptoms more or less identical to those pneumonia, it is possible that “COVID-19 disease” is actually pneumonia.

    The fact that 3,000-plus people who have died of pneumonia this year is not proof that they died of coronavirus. According to Wikipedia, most people carry in their bodies as many as fifty viruses that make some people sick some of the time. But the majority don’t get sick from most of the viruses in their bodies very often. And if they do get sick from one or more of these viruses, it is usually only the common cold. It would thus not be surprising if most or nearly all of the people who die of pneumonia will test positive for COVID-19, and many other viruses as well. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it was COVID-19 that killed them.

  15. Serologic tests are needed YES! This would allow those who have anti-bodies in their system to go back to work safely!

  16. “New research stresses the urgent need for serologic testing to help tackle the COVID-19 outbreak
    Serologic tests are blood tests that look for antibodies in your blood, and would allow scientists to decipher what fraction of the British public have already had COVID-19 and recovered, and provide an improved estimate of the number remaining at risk of serious illness.

    The research led by Professor Sunetra Gupta and Dr Jose Lourenco from Oxford’s Department of Zoology, used a well-understood and widely studied modelling approach. The model describes rates of transition between three classes of individuals – those that have not had the disease and are therefore susceptible to catching it, those that are infected and can transmit the virus to susceptible individuals, and those that have had the disease and have recovered.

    Like all models, theirs had to be parameterised, which is challenging due to current knowledge gaps leading to large uncertainties on certain key properties of the virus and COVID-19.

    In a series of computational experiments, Gupta and colleagues suggest that current uncertainties around which proportion of a population is at risk of severe disease can lead to vastly different estimates on the current stage of an epidemic.

    Consequently, they show that the number of reported deaths can equally be explained by the existence of a very small risk group and many infection cases in the overall population, or, alternatively, by a larger risk group but a small number infection cases in the overall population.

    The key conclusion of the report is the need for serological testing to get a first, and critical insight into how many people have already been exposed to the virus (herd-immunity level). Knowing this will allow scientists to infer the risk group size and change how the research community calibrates models that feed into public health policy.

    To work out whether someone has had COVID-19 and has recovered requires testing for antibodies in their blood. Until the very recent development of antibody tests, it was impossible to tell whether someone had had the infection and recovered.

    The confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in the press are based on individuals who were infected with the virus at the time of testing. If these individuals had had the virus and had recovered, these tests would give a negative result. Given that many people who were tested were already seriously ill with COVID-19, estimating the death rate due to SARS-CoV-2 from these data is likely to result in an elevated estimate of the mortality rate.

    To more accurately estimate the mortality rate due to the virus and to assess how many more are at risk of dying from it, it is necessary to use antibody tests to work out the number of people who have been infected and have recovered.” This is from Oxford University’academic web site.

    What this means is that the world disease-control community has declared a worldwide health emergency, without having sufficient data to know whether or not there really is a health emergency.

  19. One million tested? But how many tested positive? and how many “positives” are sick? Some medical researchers think there may be large numbers of “positives” who aren’t sick.