2023-05-11 16:58:45
Three years after former US President Donald Trump declared a state of health emergency in the country, following the spread of the Corona epidemic, Washington is preparing, Thursday, to end it, burdened with a large death toll.
newspaper “The New York Times“Today, Thursday, President Joe Biden’s administration will allow the emergency declaration to expire, providing a moment to assess how the United States is responding to the worst health crisis in a century,” she wrote in a report.
And speaking of the need to assess the general situation, after the end of the crisis, the newspaper indicated that a big mistake occurred during the Corona pandemic, as the lack of investment in public health in America at the federal and state levels exacerbated matters.
The newspaper quoted health experts as seeing the deficiencies they recorded during the battle against the Corona epidemic in the United States, and ways to avoid them, the most prominent of these points:
communication
Experts say that when dealing with an outbreak of an infectious disease, communication is not just part of the response, it is the response itself.
The Corona pandemic has shown that messages to the masses to be wary of the epidemic can lead to the opposite of the desired results, and even to exacerbating the spread of the disease and undermining confidence in public health institutions.
On the other hand, experts say, the key to gaining confidence and reassuring the public is for those in charge of the health sector to explain to the masses that the instructions they give them today may change tomorrow, and then admit that what they said yesterday may have been wrong.
“When you come out with the public every day, you can own up to your mistakes, what you’ve learned from them, and you have their trust,” said Richard Besser, former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the Obama administration.
Share data
Experts who spoke to the Journal say the work the CDC should have been doing during the pandemic has been hampered by outdated data systems and mismatched data sharing between the federal government, states and health providers.
And unlike Britain and Israel, which have national healthcare systems, the US has no mechanism for the free flow of data between public health agencies and private providers.
Therefore, experts believe that responding to a rapidly mutating virus such as COVID-19 that poses different risks to different population groups requires better and faster data.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, cited school closures as an example where, in his opinion, the data, if shared in time, could have revealed when the closures should be.
He said some variants of the coronavirus were more deadly to children than others, adding that if officials had access to that data in a timely manner, they might be able to adapt school closures for when students are most vulnerable.
Storage of vital supplies
In the early months of the pandemic, frontline health workers faced severe shortages of supplies, forcing them to reuse face masks many times, wear unsuitable personal protective clothing or go without this equipment altogether.
The federal government has greatly expanded its pandemic supply reserve since then, giving it a head start on responding to another devastating coronavirus wave or a different viral outbreak that requires similar resources.
Prior to the pandemic, government procurement of the Strategic National Stockpile was heavily geared towards protection against bioterrorism agents such as anthrax.
In March 2020, the stock had 13 million N95 masks, while as of early this month, it had 352 million. During the same period, the number of ventilators rose to about 150,000 from 12,700.
Invest in vaccines early
As a model for responding to future pandemics, experts point to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s coronavirus vaccine development program.
Anthony Fauci, an immunologist, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a former advisor to the US administration, said that the “Warp Speed” program provided effective vaccines to Americans in record time, in part, because the federal government spent years investing in basic scientific research.
During Operation Warp Speed, federal officials purchased massive quantities of vaccines that were still in development.
It is reported that the US government funded and supported clinical trials run by Pfizer and Moderna, which introduced the first coronavirus vaccines.
Don’t rely on vaccines alone
Vaccines have proven to be the most effective bulwark against infection or death from COVID-19, but health experts said interest in vaccination has overshadowed efforts to develop and deliver treatments.
Antibody drugs are not approved for use in immunocompromised people by the US Food and Drug Administration, while experts say more antivirals are needed.
And the Biden administration has focused heavily on booster vaccines, which have fallen short of the wave of vaccinations that began in the fall of 2021.
Experts advise supporting other strategies aimed at preventing the spread of the virus, such as improving indoor air quality in institutions, which has received relatively modest attention, according to their understanding.
The Corona virus has killed more than 1.1 million people in the United States, and more than 1,000 are still dying every week, according to the same American newspaper.
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