Coronavirus was likely spreading widely across the US as early as February, model suggests
From CNN’s Naomi Thomas
Coronavirus was probably spreading widely across the US in February, new modeling data suggests, and it only took a few imported cases from other countries to set off rapid spread inside the borders.
While direct imports from China and other countries may have been responsible for the early introduction of Covid-19 to the US, most spread was state to state, researchers led by a team at Northeastern University in Boston reported.
“We estimate widespread community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in February, 2020,” a team led by Northeastern’s Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems wrote on MedRxiv, a pre-print server. The work has not been peer-reviewed.
“Our results indicate that many states were seeded from domestic sources rather than international,” the team wrote. “For most of the continental states, the largest contribution of imported infections arrived through domestic travel flows.”
The US announced restrictions on travel from China on January 31. The researchers say their modeling study suggests the restrictions came far too late.
“Importations from mainland China may be relevant in seeding the epidemic in January, but then play a small role in the COVID-19 expansion in the US because of the travel restrictions imposed to/from mainland China after January 23, 2020,” they wrote.
“Domestic sources account for 85% of the virus introductions in Nebraska, 86% in New Mexico, 86% in Arkansas, and 95% in North Dakota.”
The model contrasts with evidence from several studies that suggest there was already a significant number of infections in the US by the time the travel restrictions were announced on January 31, the researchers wrote.
Fauci defends Pence’s optimism on coronavirus, says he’s doing “a very good job”
From CNN’s Shelby Lin Erdman
The United States’ leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said White House coronavirus task force leader Vice President Mike Pence is doing “a very good job.”
Fauci and task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx regularly sound the alarm about the pandemic at briefings or in interviews, while Pence has touted what a good job the Trump administration is doing.
“He is trying in his role as the vice president to really, in a certain sense, also point out some of the things that are going well,” Fauci told the Wall Street Journal in a podcast Wednesday.
“So, he’s a person who’s an optimistic person and he’s doing a very good job as the leader of the task force, I must say.
“I look at the data, I analyze the data and I give my best opinion based on the evidence.”
Fauci said there are many facets to the task force discussions, and he and his colleagues are primarily focused on public health. Pence, he said, has other concerns.
“There’s the issue and the need, from an economic standpoint, to get open,” Fauci said. “So all of that goes into the mix and then you see the kind of recommendations that go out but you know as a member of the task force, I’m telling you that we have a serious situation that we really do need to address.”
Fauci said the public health and economic policies need to work in tandem. Other health experts worry that President Donald Trump has pushed his economic priorities at the expense of American lives. So far, more than 132,000 Americans have died from Covid-19.
“We shouldn’t think of it as one against the other because once you start thinking there’s public health and there’s the economy opening it looks like they’re opposing forces,” Fauci said.
“So, what we’re trying to do is to get the public health message, if heard and implemented, be actually a gateway to facilitate opening and an easier way instead of there’s guys are on this side and those guys and ladies are on the other side.”
