Fauci has a bold idea to catch the most dangerous coronavirus spreaders

[Chris Smith]

• The lack of coronavirus symptoms in a large portion of COVID-19 patients makes it harder to detect the illness and contain the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview.
• Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, the administration is considering increasing the amount of COVID-19 testing and using a new protocol that could speed up the detection of the most dangerous spreaders: Asymptomatic carriers who have no idea they’ve been infected.
• Fauci said officials are considering pool testing as a measure to cover more ground and map out the spread of COVID-19 more accurately.

Testing for the novel coronavirus has been an enormous problem in America since the early days of the pandemic. At first, health officials just weren’t prepared to support the kind of widespread testing campaigns needed to contain the illness. This meant that only people exhibiting severe symptoms were tested. Asymptomatic carriers were never tested, even if these people knew they were exposed to the virus. As testing ramped up, Trump repeatedly saw it as a problem that would only worsen America’s numbers. The more people that were tested, the more cases we would find. That lining of thinking is ridiculous, of course, because stopping testing would not make the illness go away. The only difference is that you would not be able to confirm how many people contracted it. Tens of thousands of people would still die after experiencing a severe form of COVID-19. Other countries have proven that increased testing combined with contact tracing and other measures can flatten the curve. Furthermore, it’s easier to treat people early on if you know they’re infected. Or you can at least stop the asymptomatic carriers from getting out and spreading the illness to others.

One of the most worrisome things about the novel coronavirus is that not all people develop symptoms, which makes it that much harder to contain. We already know that asymptomatic people can spread the virus to surfaces, and therefore to other people. And we know the bodies of people who don’t have symptoms still exhibit the same changes, including pneumonia-like signs consistent with COVID-19, as well as lower white blood cell counts. But the changes aren’t apparent, and the patients do not feel like they’re ill.

The US is witnessing a massive spike in COVID-19 cases right now, with several states that have reopened recently fueling the new daily records. In response to the developments, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that coronavirus testing will increase, contradicting Trump’s recent remarks. Moreover, the infectious disease expert also has an idea for how we might speed up testing to catch the most dangerous COVID-19 spreaders, the asymptomatics.

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Fauci has a bold idea to catch the most dangerous coronavirus spreaders originally appeared on BGR.com on Sun, 28 Jun 2020 at 10:03:31 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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