Speaker 1: Before we begin, I want to remind you that we'd
Speaker 1: still like to hear from you. We're looking for more
Speaker 1: of your questions about the ethics and etiquette of social distancing.
Speaker 1: If there's a situation, behavior, or activity in your life
Speaker 1: that you're not your how to handle, and the age
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen, leave us a voicemail at six four
Speaker 1: six three two four. We may use your voice on
Speaker 1: the show. And now let's get started. Welcome to Prognosis.
Speaker 1: I'm Laura Carlson. It's day forty eight since coronavirus was
Speaker 1: declared a global pandemic. Our main story, the goal of
Speaker 1: widespread testing, seems to finally be one the White House
Speaker 1: is taking seriously. President Donald Trump announced a comprehensive testing
Speaker 1: plan on Monday, but the country is already months into
Speaker 1: a testing crisis that may be too far gone to fix.
Speaker 1: It leaves open the question can the US prepare itself
Speaker 1: for the next phase. But first, here's what happened today.
Speaker 1: After an outrage about how funds for a government relief
Speaker 1: program for small businesses were dispersed, the government says it
Speaker 1: will keep a close eye on who's getting the money
Speaker 1: and whether they need it. U s. Treasury Secretary Stephen
Speaker 1: Menuchin said the government will audit every small business loan
Speaker 1: of more than two million dollars under the Paycheck Protection Program.
Speaker 1: In the first round of funds from the p p P,
Speaker 1: large amounts went to big public companies and chains. Menu
Speaker 1: Chan's comments came in a CNBC interview today. Some American
Speaker 1: car manufacturing is revving up again. Ford said it intends
Speaker 1: to restart initial production at most of its main European
Speaker 1: plants starting May fourth. The company said manufacturing will resume
Speaker 1: in a phased approach, and employees will receive personal care kits,
Speaker 1: including masks and thermometers. Finally, President Donald Trump plans to
Speaker 1: order meat processing plants to remain open. According to a
Speaker 1: person familiar with the matter, the government will provide additional
Speaker 1: protective gear for employees, as well as guidance. The order
Speaker 1: comes under the Defense Production Act, which gives a president
Speaker 1: broad powers to direct industrial production in a crisis. The
Speaker 1: order sets the stage for a showdown between America's meat giants,
Speaker 1: who have been pressing to reopen plants, and local officials
Speaker 1: and labor unions who say the government is not protecting
Speaker 1: workers across the country. At least six hundred meat processing
Speaker 1: employees have either tested positive for the disease or had
Speaker 1: to go into self quarantine. According to the United Food
Speaker 1: and Commercial Workers Union, the largest private sector union, twenty
Speaker 1: workers have died and now our main story. The Trump
Speaker 1: administration announced a plan yesterday to ramp up coronavirus testing.
Speaker 1: The White House said its goal was to provide enough
Speaker 1: tests to allow every state to test at least two
Speaker 1: percent of residents. But even as it announces a new
Speaker 1: commitment to testing, the federal government has pushed much of
Speaker 1: the responsibility to states. Because of the lack of federal
Speaker 1: leadership on testing, experts say the result has been a
Speaker 1: free for all among states who are all desperate to
Speaker 1: get their hands on tests. The competition drives up prices,
Speaker 1: eats up time, and ultimately dictates how many tests can do.
Speaker 1: And the Court in John Tazzi has both reported on
Speaker 1: the difficult logistics required to mount a meaningful testing operation.
Speaker 1: I talked to them to understand how prepared we really
Speaker 1: are to scale up widespread testing. Why is testing so
Speaker 1: important for COVID nineteen? So usually when we think about testing,
Speaker 1: you think of it in the scenario that you're sick,
Speaker 1: but It actually has a really tremendous kind of importance
Speaker 1: when you think about the health of our communities and
Speaker 1: our states and the country, because you if you someone
Speaker 1: is sick, you want to make sure that they are
Speaker 1: not kind of out in the community and going to
Speaker 1: the grocery store and seeing their friends and things like that,
Speaker 1: because that's how this disease spreads. So testing has a
Speaker 1: really important role when you think about kind of public
Speaker 1: health and and you know, preventing this infection from spreading
Speaker 1: further and preventing sort of a second wave of infections.
Speaker 1: You know, so many people are social distancing right now,
Speaker 1: and that's really really important, but testing is actually even
Speaker 1: more important when people sort of relax the social distancing
Speaker 1: as we're starting to see sort of happen, you know
Speaker 1: in states all around the US right now. Who oversees
Speaker 1: how and to what extent communities are tested for coronavirus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the testing landscape is incredibly fractured. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we talk about US testing like it's one monolithic entity,
Speaker 1: but it's actually carried out by a ton of different
Speaker 1: actors around the country. Commercial labs like Quest Diagnostics and
Speaker 1: lab COREP do a lot of the testing, but you're
Speaker 1: also seeing you know, hospitals do testing. You're seeing state
Speaker 1: public health labs do testing in a in a given
Speaker 1: state or area. So there's been a lot of criticism
Speaker 1: of the White House since they put out some guidelines
Speaker 1: about states reopening about ten days or so ago, and
Speaker 1: public health experts saying, we need a sharper focus on testing.
Speaker 1: Testing is what's going to really be key and getting
Speaker 1: us out of this situation and allowing economies to reopen.
Speaker 1: And so we saw this come out of the White House,
Speaker 1: you know, yesterday, is saying testing is important. Here's our plan.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try to help, uh, you know, states test better.
Speaker 1: But they're still really putting this emphasis on the states
Speaker 1: leading the charge. And so we're hearing public health experts
Speaker 1: say this is great that there's a new focus on testing,
Speaker 1: but the federal government needs to be involved more, you know,
Speaker 1: as sort of the link the link and the key
Speaker 1: kind of authority that that can kind of act between
Speaker 1: states and across states. You know, what are some of
Speaker 1: the things that they're able to do that states individually
Speaker 1: can't do with regard to testing. A big thing we've
Speaker 1: been hearing from labs around the country is we need
Speaker 1: you to really coordinate the sort of division of supplies
Speaker 1: among different labs. So a big problem facing labs and
Speaker 1: inhibiting how much testing they can do has been you know,
Speaker 1: one lab maybe doesn't have enough jobs to take the
Speaker 1: samples to do the testing, the diagnostic testing for COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: Let's say, another lab maybe is having trouble getting the
Speaker 1: right re agents needed to process the testing. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: some labs are struggling with getting enough protective equipment, which
Speaker 1: has been an issue not just in hospitals but also
Speaker 1: in labs, because labs also need to protect their people,
Speaker 1: you know, from getting this infection. So we're seeing labs say,
Speaker 1: the divisions of these supplies around the country are very uneven.
Speaker 1: You know, some people have too much, some people have
Speaker 1: too little. So what exactly is the Trump administration doing
Speaker 1: about testing and and what has led so much criticism
Speaker 1: of their approach. So it's important to say that the
Speaker 1: Trump administration is aware of these issues, aware of the
Speaker 1: supply chain problems you know, involved, and trying to to
Speaker 1: make some differences in these sort of challenges. The real
Speaker 1: thing that has been sort of a persistent criticism of
Speaker 1: the Trump administration has been this sort of the fact
Speaker 1: that they came out with this guideline, these guidelines the
Speaker 1: other week for reopening state economies, saying this is how
Speaker 1: we measure it, this is how we know if a
Speaker 1: state is prepared to reopen. But by the way, these
Speaker 1: guidelines are voluntary, and these guidelines talked about testing, but
Speaker 1: they didn't set specific goals in terms of testing, leading
Speaker 1: to a lot of criticism that the Trump administration wasn't
Speaker 1: stressing testing enough in terms of its talking about reopening.
Speaker 1: So fast forward to this week on Monday, you're having
Speaker 1: more states talking about reopening, pressing towards reopening, and the
Speaker 1: Trump administration is putting out that same day new guidelines
Speaker 1: about testing, sort of outlining what they've done so far
Speaker 1: and saying, you know, testing is important. Deborah Burkes, who's
Speaker 1: a top medical advisor to the administration, has been involved
Speaker 1: in talking to lab directors about the situations in their lab.
Speaker 1: There's one diagnostic manufacturer that has actually too much supply
Speaker 1: of their testing product, and she's trying to figure out
Speaker 1: why aren't labs using this product. So they're out there
Speaker 1: they're listening to these problems. But you know, you also
Speaker 1: have the President repeatedly stressing that we have enough testing
Speaker 1: capacity right now, and experts say that's just not true. John,
Speaker 1: you wrote about contact tracing. Explain what contact tracing is
Speaker 1: and what it has to do with testing. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: contact tracing is something that public health departments have done
Speaker 1: for decades. It's sort of bread and butter detective work
Speaker 1: to understand how diseases are spreading and to really stop
Speaker 1: that transmission. We're hearing a lot more about it now
Speaker 1: because of the coronavirus, and the idea behind it is,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have someone who has an infectious disease,
Speaker 1: you know they may be in contact with a number
Speaker 1: of other people who are susceptible to that disease. With
Speaker 1: the coronavirus, they may have those contacts before they even
Speaker 1: realize they were sick themselves, or they may never realize
Speaker 1: that they were sick because they were asymptomatic. So the
Speaker 1: idea behind contact tracing as you find out all the
Speaker 1: people who may have been in touch with someone who
Speaker 1: is infected and might have transmitted the disease to and
Speaker 1: then you monitor them. In the case of COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: you ask them to isolate for fourteen days to see
Speaker 1: if they develop symptoms. If they do, you know that
Speaker 1: that person may have infected others. So you kind of
Speaker 1: repeat the process case by case, chasing down their contacts,
Speaker 1: asking people to isolate, finding out who that who else
Speaker 1: they might have been in touch with. And that's really
Speaker 1: what's UM essential to breaking the chains of transmission for
Speaker 1: the virus. So your article focuses on a new software
Speaker 1: UM that's that's being developed and currently being implemented, called
Speaker 1: Sarah Alert, And I was wondering if you might just
Speaker 1: explain how does sarah alert work. It's really a tool
Speaker 1: for public health to kind of track and isolate people
Speaker 1: who may have of COVID nineteen or people who may
Speaker 1: have been exposed. So, uh, you know, when a public
Speaker 1: health worker gets UM, they basically developed lists of UM
Speaker 1: contacts from known cases, right, all the people that you
Speaker 1: may have been UH in touch with in the period
Speaker 1: when you were potentially infectious and spreading the virus. Those
Speaker 1: contacts are entered into a system. Health workers reach out
Speaker 1: to them and ask if they've experienced any symptoms, and
Speaker 1: you know, may recommend testing or treatment based on their answers.
Speaker 1: Whether software basically does automate much of the process of
Speaker 1: checking in on them. They can decide whether they want
Speaker 1: to be contacted by text message, by email, by voice call,
Speaker 1: and then every day they are contacted automatically UM they're
Speaker 1: asked to report symptoms. People who do report symptoms get
Speaker 1: flagged for public health workers that they may need more
Speaker 1: follow up, and people who don't respond at all also
Speaker 1: get flagged UM that they may need a human intervention.
Speaker 1: So basically it it's kind of automates much of the
Speaker 1: manual work done by public health departments. Right now, and
Speaker 1: who is using SARAH alert? So the first three UM
Speaker 1: places to start using it in April where the State
Speaker 1: of Arkansas, the city of Danbury, Connecticut, and the Territory
Speaker 1: of the Northern Mariana Islands uh A, US Commonwealth in Pacific.
Speaker 1: And you know, those were I think chosen as sort
Speaker 1: of test cases so they would have it in you know,
Speaker 1: three very different types of jurisdictions, A state, local, and
Speaker 1: a territory. So how do these two different prongs of
Speaker 1: testing inform each other? Testing itself and contact tracing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I mean both are important, right, I mean
Speaker 1: I think one one without the other is probably not
Speaker 1: going to get us there, and there's lots of sort
Speaker 1: of basic public health activity around testing and contact tracing
Speaker 1: um that we need to do, and we need to
Speaker 1: do much better and much faster, I think, than than
Speaker 1: we have you know, in the United States. This is
Speaker 1: work that's sort of distributed across many different local, county,
Speaker 1: state government entities, and some are better equipped to do
Speaker 1: it than others, and I think, you know, they're all
Speaker 1: being kind of strained by the current situation. So you know,
Speaker 1: the scale of the undertaking ahead is pretty astonishing, and
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're sort of still finding out where
Speaker 1: those stress points and fractures in the system and our
Speaker 1: ability to respond. Our that was Bloomberg Reporters and the
Speaker 1: Court and John Tazzi, and that's our show today. For
Speaker 1: coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around
Speaker 1: the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if
Speaker 1: you like the show, please leave us a review in
Speaker 1: a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best
Speaker 1: way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The
Speaker 1: Prognosis Daily Edition is hosted by me Laura Carlson. The
Speaker 1: show was produced by Me tophor Foreheaz, Jordan Gospoure, and
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson. Today's main story was reported by Emma Court
Speaker 1: and John Tozzi. Original music by Leo Sidrian. Our editors
Speaker 1: are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.