When he called the White House about a coronavirus outbreak, the Indiana doctor expected to get some help, not a “head in the sand approach.”
It was Oct. 1, and Mark Fox, a county public health officer in South Bend, had just learned that the University of Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus after attending a Rose Garden ceremony days earlier in honor of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. It seemed likely that either Jenkins had taken the virus to the White House, potentially infecting others there, or he had become infected in Washington and brought the virus home to South Bend.
There are long-standing protocols for investigating the spread of a virus: contact tracing, or interviewing infected people about their recent interactions and advising those exposed that they should get tested. There’s also a more cutting-edge technology that can map the spread of a virus by tracking tiny changes in its genetic code. The Trump administration did not effectively deploy either technique in response to what Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, has called a “superspreader event” at the White House, leaving not just the president and his family and staff at risk, but also the hundreds of people who were potentially exposed.
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Officials say the White House called off early efforts to get to the bottom of the outbreak, including sequencing the genomes of virus samples from infected individuals. This genetic analysis could have revealed shared mutations that linked cases in Washington and other affected communities.
Had the administration done such an investigation, it would know whether infections among aides to Vice President Pence that were reported this past weekend bore the same genetic signature as earlier cases at the White House. That could indicate whether the virus was circulating among administration officials for weeks or had slipped through infection-control measures a second time.
But the administration has shown little interest in investigating its outbreak, Fox said. He was initially told that the White House would send contact tracers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of a multistate investigation — and later learned they were asked to stand down. To this day, Fox, the local official tasked with contact tracing for the outbreak, has not seen a full list of people from his county who attended the Rose Garden ceremony.
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“I have seen so many opportunities not just missed but cavalierly dismissed by this White House,” said Fox, citing the president’s travel even after learning he’d been in close contact with staff members who tested positive. “He failed to follow what in our county would have been really basic public health guidance.”
Fox’s frustration with the White House response isn’t unique. In Minnesota, after a Sept. 30 Trump visit, health officials sought the names of attendees at a private presidential fundraiser to see who might have been exposed to the president and staff members. The White House did not provide the requested information.
The day after the Rose Garden ceremony, Trump hosted some 25 families of U.S. military personnel killed in action. While at least one veterans organization supporting the event said it was contacted by the White House, several families were left on their own to prevent further spread, even after the president suggested that they may have given him the virus, according to veterans organizations.
Families of fallen military service members attend a reception with Trump at the White House one day after the Rose Garden ceremony. (Andrea Hanks/White House )
It’s not clear how the president and several dozen others in his orbit contracted the coronavirus in early October. Was it at the celebration for Barrett, the event with Gold Star families or one of the other events Trump attended before announcing he had tested positive in the early hours of Oct. 2? Did the administration officials all become infected at the same time, or were they sickened by multiple strains of the virus on different occasions? Experts say vigorous contact tracing and a genetic investigation could answer these questions. But without these standard public health practices, it may never be known how widely the outbreak spread — or who was avoidably harmed.
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The White House insisted the administration has followed all CDC guidelines, which advise contact tracers to reach out to anyone who interacted with an infected person up to 48 hours before that person was diagnosed. The Rose Garden event was five days before the president tested positive.
“This is nothing more than the continuation of a disgusting fishing expedition to try to tie a White House event from more than four weeks ago to a ‘so-called’ outbreak with no scientific or even common sense connection,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email to The Post Monday.
A second spokesman, Brian Morgenstern, earlier characterized the source of the president’s infection as “unknowable.”
“Of course it’s knowable,” said Tom Frieden, who directed the CDC under President Barack Obama and now runs the nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. “It’s only unknowable if you don’t want to know.”
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The CDC declined to comment.
More at:https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...covid-outbreak-investigation-contact-tracing/
It was Oct. 1, and Mark Fox, a county public health officer in South Bend, had just learned that the University of Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus after attending a Rose Garden ceremony days earlier in honor of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. It seemed likely that either Jenkins had taken the virus to the White House, potentially infecting others there, or he had become infected in Washington and brought the virus home to South Bend.
There are long-standing protocols for investigating the spread of a virus: contact tracing, or interviewing infected people about their recent interactions and advising those exposed that they should get tested. There’s also a more cutting-edge technology that can map the spread of a virus by tracking tiny changes in its genetic code. The Trump administration did not effectively deploy either technique in response to what Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, has called a “superspreader event” at the White House, leaving not just the president and his family and staff at risk, but also the hundreds of people who were potentially exposed.
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Officials say the White House called off early efforts to get to the bottom of the outbreak, including sequencing the genomes of virus samples from infected individuals. This genetic analysis could have revealed shared mutations that linked cases in Washington and other affected communities.
Had the administration done such an investigation, it would know whether infections among aides to Vice President Pence that were reported this past weekend bore the same genetic signature as earlier cases at the White House. That could indicate whether the virus was circulating among administration officials for weeks or had slipped through infection-control measures a second time.
But the administration has shown little interest in investigating its outbreak, Fox said. He was initially told that the White House would send contact tracers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of a multistate investigation — and later learned they were asked to stand down. To this day, Fox, the local official tasked with contact tracing for the outbreak, has not seen a full list of people from his county who attended the Rose Garden ceremony.
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“I have seen so many opportunities not just missed but cavalierly dismissed by this White House,” said Fox, citing the president’s travel even after learning he’d been in close contact with staff members who tested positive. “He failed to follow what in our county would have been really basic public health guidance.”
Fox’s frustration with the White House response isn’t unique. In Minnesota, after a Sept. 30 Trump visit, health officials sought the names of attendees at a private presidential fundraiser to see who might have been exposed to the president and staff members. The White House did not provide the requested information.
The day after the Rose Garden ceremony, Trump hosted some 25 families of U.S. military personnel killed in action. While at least one veterans organization supporting the event said it was contacted by the White House, several families were left on their own to prevent further spread, even after the president suggested that they may have given him the virus, according to veterans organizations.
Families of fallen military service members attend a reception with Trump at the White House one day after the Rose Garden ceremony. (Andrea Hanks/White House )
It’s not clear how the president and several dozen others in his orbit contracted the coronavirus in early October. Was it at the celebration for Barrett, the event with Gold Star families or one of the other events Trump attended before announcing he had tested positive in the early hours of Oct. 2? Did the administration officials all become infected at the same time, or were they sickened by multiple strains of the virus on different occasions? Experts say vigorous contact tracing and a genetic investigation could answer these questions. But without these standard public health practices, it may never be known how widely the outbreak spread — or who was avoidably harmed.
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The White House insisted the administration has followed all CDC guidelines, which advise contact tracers to reach out to anyone who interacted with an infected person up to 48 hours before that person was diagnosed. The Rose Garden event was five days before the president tested positive.
“This is nothing more than the continuation of a disgusting fishing expedition to try to tie a White House event from more than four weeks ago to a ‘so-called’ outbreak with no scientific or even common sense connection,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email to The Post Monday.
A second spokesman, Brian Morgenstern, earlier characterized the source of the president’s infection as “unknowable.”
“Of course it’s knowable,” said Tom Frieden, who directed the CDC under President Barack Obama and now runs the nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. “It’s only unknowable if you don’t want to know.”
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The CDC declined to comment.
More at:https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...covid-outbreak-investigation-contact-tracing/
