Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's stayed two hundred
Speaker 1: and three since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's
Speaker 1: main story cases are once again ticking up in New
Speaker 1: York City, a former virus hotspot that has managed to
Speaker 1: keep its rates low for months. But first, here's what
Speaker 1: happened in virus news today. In the US, COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: extended its march across the Midwest. On Tuesday, cases surged
Speaker 1: in North Dakota, making its outbreak as bad as Floridas
Speaker 1: was in July. Cases were also on the rise in
Speaker 1: South Dakota and Wisconsin. In North Dakota, the seven day
Speaker 1: average of new cases climbed to a new record, according
Speaker 1: to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: Deaths are climbing too, but they typically appear in the
Speaker 1: data weeks after cases. A potentially game changing COVID test
Speaker 1: has been cleared for use in some European countries. The test,
Speaker 1: made by US company Beckton Dickinson, returns results in just
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. It's part of a new class of quicker
Speaker 1: screening tools that detect proteins called antigens they detect on
Speaker 1: the surface of stars. Covey too. Beckton Dickinson expects to
Speaker 1: begin selling the test, which runs on the company's cell
Speaker 1: phone sized bt Veritor Plus system, in European markets by
Speaker 1: the end of October. It will likely be used by
Speaker 1: emergency departments, general practitioners, and pediatricians. Finally, a sobering new
Speaker 1: report shows that one in every one thousand children in
Speaker 1: New York State lost a parent to COVID nineteen between
Speaker 1: March and July. That's according to an analysis by United
Speaker 1: Hospital Fund and Boston Consulting Group. The report shows as
Speaker 1: many as three hundred and twenty five thousand children were
Speaker 1: pushed into or near poverty by the pandemic related economic downturn.
Speaker 1: That brings us to today's main story. New York and
Speaker 1: in particular, New York City was hit hardest in the
Speaker 1: early months of the pandemic in the US, but after
Speaker 1: a strict lockdown, the city has enjoyed months of the
Speaker 1: lowest case rates in the country. Now, though, the city
Speaker 1: is starting to see a turn that it has long feared.
Speaker 1: As schools reopened and the weather gets cooler, cases have
Speaker 1: begun to rise. Its rate of positive cases exceeded three
Speaker 1: for the first time in months, and the mayor is
Speaker 1: considering shutting select schools and businesses in the zip codes
Speaker 1: driving the increase. Senior Editor for Health Drew Armstrong has
Speaker 1: been tracking New York City's efforts to recover from the
Speaker 1: outbreaks devastating toll and to safely repair its wounded economy.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Drew earlier today. After several months of
Speaker 1: declining case rates, New York and New York City in
Speaker 1: particular is starting to see a spike in COVID nineteen cases.
Speaker 1: What's going on here? I think what we're beginning to
Speaker 1: see right now with the increase in cases is in
Speaker 1: some ways really really unsurprising. If you think about how
Speaker 1: viruses infect people, they need interactions between sick people and
Speaker 1: healthy people. And the more interactions of people that you have,
Speaker 1: the more chances you have for a virus to transmit.
Speaker 1: And what's been going on in New York is that
Speaker 1: we're seeing children go back to school, um restaurants are
Speaker 1: opening back up, people are going back into their offices,
Speaker 1: and every single one of those things essentially represents a
Speaker 1: new opportunity for the virus. And so if you talk
Speaker 1: to epidemiologists and people who study infectious disease. Then you
Speaker 1: know they would tell you that this isn't shocking at all.
Speaker 1: It's in fact exactly what you would expect to see happen.
Speaker 1: You know, the more you open up, the more cases
Speaker 1: you're going to get. The big question is what happens
Speaker 1: now next? And are the public health measures that are
Speaker 1: in place social distancing, masking, limited capacity in all of
Speaker 1: these places, are they enough to keep this tamped down
Speaker 1: at a elevated but under control number of cases, or
Speaker 1: are we at the start of a new surge. So
Speaker 1: I was wondering if we might drill down in terms
Speaker 1: of where we're seeing this this new spike in cases,
Speaker 1: what are the communities or what are the geographies that
Speaker 1: we're really seeing these new cases emerging. Well, right now,
Speaker 1: we're seeing these cases emerge in a handful of neighborhoods
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, and we've seen the city push back and
Speaker 1: say we're going to go in and try and push
Speaker 1: very hard on better public health practices in some of
Speaker 1: those places. And I think what's important to remember here
Speaker 1: is that you know, again, think about the virus not
Speaker 1: as a countrywide phenomenon or a statewide phenomenon or a
Speaker 1: citywide phenomenon. This is really something that spreads in communities,
Speaker 1: and so you have to think about infections as happening
Speaker 1: in communities, and communities can be everything from you know,
Speaker 1: somebody's workplace to the church they go to, to the
Speaker 1: restaurant they eat, to their group of friends. All of
Speaker 1: these outbreaks tend to start locally and then spread, and
Speaker 1: every single thing that we've seen um with this virus
Speaker 1: has has been that way. It is. This is a
Speaker 1: human to human virus, which is why you know when
Speaker 1: public health workers are doing contact tracing, they're looking for
Speaker 1: the people you've been in touch with. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: how these types of diseases work. They are hyper hyper hyperlocal,
Speaker 1: and that's how they begin in outbreaks before then becoming
Speaker 1: more widespread potentially. Do you think then this actually makes
Speaker 1: it a much more difficult job for saying, un disciple
Speaker 1: or local or even state government to really impose effective
Speaker 1: um SAVE restrictions are effective new guidelines because things are
Speaker 1: so hyper local. As you were saying, well, I think
Speaker 1: what you see is that there is a effort to
Speaker 1: try and get the communities where these are happening to
Speaker 1: really up their public health protections and that can have
Speaker 1: a real effect from everything that we know. Um, the
Speaker 1: other question is does it escape those communities? You know,
Speaker 1: if you have a group of people who aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: complying with some of the public health guidelines like masking
Speaker 1: and social distancing, can the virus then escape from one
Speaker 1: of those outbreaks into a wider population that is complying
Speaker 1: Or are are the the public health efforts like a
Speaker 1: mask like social distancing, Are they sufficient to keep the
Speaker 1: virus from developing into a wider outbreak because it's not
Speaker 1: as easily able to gain hold in the broader population
Speaker 1: going into perhaps one specific type of community duty. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to escape the fact that we're here
Speaker 1: at the end of September, and this was the month
Speaker 1: that a lot of New York schools started to reopen.
Speaker 1: So what do you think this this means for schools
Speaker 1: who perhaps have just reopened with this new spike in cases?
Speaker 1: I mean, I can I can tell you from a
Speaker 1: bit of personal experience. I live north of New York
Speaker 1: City and a colleague, UM just got noticed that the
Speaker 1: middle school here is going to remote learning. After a
Speaker 1: couple of cases. UM. I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that you will almost certainly see happen is this kind
Speaker 1: of on again, off again um practice with school where
Speaker 1: even with the restrictions and schools have put in place
Speaker 1: to limit some of the numbers of students that are
Speaker 1: in place, you're going to see, you know, cases pop up.
Speaker 1: Schools temporarily go to remote learning fully while it gets resolved,
Speaker 1: students are back for a while, then they go back
Speaker 1: to a remote learning because more cases pop up. If
Speaker 1: you have virus circulating in the community and you have schools,
Speaker 1: they're open and then with a trigger to close if
Speaker 1: they get things. You know, it makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense that you would see this kind of on off
Speaker 1: switch happening over and over again. That's probably really frustrating
Speaker 1: to parents. UM. And I think we'll need to see
Speaker 1: how effective it is in terms of controlling potential outbreaks.
Speaker 1: And let's focus on the economic impact. What does this
Speaker 1: mean for the businesses or restaurants that have survived until
Speaker 1: now but are looking ahead and don't really see an
Speaker 1: end to this virus and potentially virus related restrictions. I
Speaker 1: think that's always been the concern, you know, that we
Speaker 1: would see a rising cases that are that that is
Speaker 1: large enough for there to be more locked on to.
Speaker 1: Other countries have done this. I mean, the UK's in
Speaker 1: the middle of it right now, Israel has and so
Speaker 1: just because you've opened back up doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: you are able to stay open if things get really
Speaker 1: really bad. Comply into with a lot of these public
Speaker 1: health measures seems to be very good. UM. I've had
Speaker 1: conversations with people who are working on the city's outbreak UM,
Speaker 1: both inside the city government UM and outside consultants to it,
Speaker 1: who think that the city has been, you know, as
Speaker 1: thoughtful as they possibly can be. You're also seeing an
Speaker 1: effort to balance the fact that you know, people do
Speaker 1: eventually tire of the kind of strictest levels of compliance
Speaker 1: with everything shut down UM, and also the fact that
Speaker 1: you know there are businesses and livelihoods UM at stake
Speaker 1: here UM that are that are in play, and you know,
Speaker 1: public health officials working with the city and working with
Speaker 1: health experts trying to figure out where how far can
Speaker 1: we open and what is the right and safe way
Speaker 1: to open in order to keep this disease under control.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, until we have a vaccine or UM,
Speaker 1: some level of population wide immunity. This doesn't disappear, UM,
Speaker 1: it doesn't go away, and so you're always dealing with
Speaker 1: some baseline level of cases. The question is does it
Speaker 1: become bigger than that? And does it does it emerge
Speaker 1: into a full blown out of control outbreak like we
Speaker 1: had earlier this spring? And so looking forward, you know,
Speaker 1: we're looking ahead to the rest of the fall and
Speaker 1: into even I mean, what do you think we are
Speaker 1: going to be seeing over the next few months, particularly
Speaker 1: with the rise of say flu season. Are we probably
Speaker 1: looking at more restrictions, more lockdowns? Um? I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you think the response is going to be if
Speaker 1: this case increase continues, It seems likely that we end
Speaker 1: up back in some level of increased restriction or at
Speaker 1: least increased concern UM. If this outbreak does get it
Speaker 1: does it if it does evolve into something much larger
Speaker 1: through the summer. One of the things that's been true
Speaker 1: is that people have been able to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time outside where it's easier to social distance UM,
Speaker 1: where it seems like you're less likely to be posed
Speaker 1: to virus um in in large quantities. And the weather
Speaker 1: is going to get colder and people are going to
Speaker 1: be moving back inside. That's gonna make things more challenging
Speaker 1: and probably increased the level of transmission. That's That's what
Speaker 1: just about everybody who works in this space that that
Speaker 1: I have spoken to says, UM. What follows that is
Speaker 1: going to be UM, I mean, hopefully a effective and
Speaker 1: safe vaccine at some point sooner rather than later, but
Speaker 1: also inevitably the types of increased public health measures like lockdown,
Speaker 1: social distancing capacity limitations. UM, those things have followed just
Speaker 1: about everywhere else and it makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: that they would follow in New York as well. That
Speaker 1: Withdrew Armstrong, and that's it for our show today. For
Speaker 1: coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit Bloomberg dot com, slash coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to
Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by Top for Foreheads Jordan Gaspure, Magnus Henrickson,
Speaker 1: and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by
Speaker 1: Drew Armstrong. Original music by Leo Sidran Our Editors are
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head
Speaker 1: of podcasts. Thanks for listening.