Pence: Patients’ tests for virus up to doctors
Lawmakers at work on emergency bill
WASHINGTON — In a move to combat the spreading coronavirus that has claimed at least nine lives in the United States, the Trump administration vowed late Tuesday that any American can now be tested for the virus if a doctor deems it necessary.
“When I talked to some state officials, there was a sense that the tests would not be administered to people that were mildly symptomatic,” Vice President Mike Pence told reporters in an off-camera White House briefing. “We’re issuing clear guidance that subject to doctors’ orders, any American can be tested.”
The announcement raised questions about whether the government can rapidly accelerate the production of testing kits, as well as how much patients will ultimately have to pay for getting tested.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are finalizing a $7.5 billion emergency bill to fund the
government’s response to the outbreak.
Lawmakers said negotiations are likely to produce a bipartisan deal today in hopes of clearing the measure through Congress by week’s end.
All of the deaths have occurred in Washington state, and most were residents of a nursing home in suburban Seattle. The number of infections in the U.S. overall climbed past 100, scattered across at least 15 states, with 27 cases in Washington alone.
“What is happening now in the United States may be the beginning of what is happening abroad,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noting that in China, where the outbreak began more than two months ago, older and sicker people are about twice as likely to become seriously ill as those who are younger and healthier. Most cases have been mild.
The nursing home outbreak apparently seeded the first case in North Carolina, authorities said. A Wake County resident who had visited the Washington state nursing home tested positive but is in isolation at home and is doing well, according to the North Carolina governor’s office.
SUPPLIES SHORTAGE
Also in the nation’s capital, the Food and Drug and Administration sought to ease a shortage of face masks by giving health care workers the OK to use an industrial type of respirator mask designed to protect construction crews from dust and debris.
Pence and other health officials urged the public not to purchase medical face masks, saying they are not necessary for the average American and that they should be saved for health-care workers.
Top congressional leaders are also scheduled to meet today about preparations inside the Capitol to protect lawmakers, staff members and visitors, a senior Democratic aide said, though there are no current plans to limit access to the Capitol complex.
Authorities have said labs across the country should have the capacity to run as many as 1 million tests by the end of the week.
The chief of the FDA, Dr. Stephen Hahn, said the FDA has been working with a private company to get as many as 2,500 test kits out to labs by the end of the week. Each kit should enable a lab to run about 500 tests, he said. But health officials were careful about making promises.
“I am optimistic, but I want to remain humble,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC.
Hahn repeated the estimate in testimony Tuesday at a Senate committee hearing, where he told Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that, although “this is a dynamic process.”
“That should give us the capacity, in the hands of laboratories once they validate, to perform up to a million tests,” he said at the hearing.
“I’m hearing from health professionals that’s unrealistic,” Murray said.
But, Pence said the 2,500 testing kits approved by the CDC should be distributed by the end of the week, primarily to hospitals in affected areas and to others that have requested them. Those kits collectively represent about 1.5 million individual tests.
Seema Verma, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said testing for the coronavirus is covered under Medicare, Medicaid and health-care exchanges established under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but it remained unclear how the costs would be handled for the estimated 27 million Americans who are uninsured.
Members of a government task force are scheduled to meet separately with airline executives and executives of commercial laboratories today.
WASHINGTON ILLNESSES
In Washington state, researchers believe the virus may have been circulating undetected for weeks. That has raised fears that there could be hundreds of undiagnosed cases in the area.
But some people who want to be tested for the virus in the state are encountering confusion, a lack of testing options and other problems as health authorities scramble to deal with the crisis.
“The people across my state are really scared. I’m hearing from people who are sick, who want to get tested and don’t know where to go,” Murray said.
One lab was already testing for coronavirus in Washington state and a second was scheduled to begin doing so Tuesday.
Amid the rising fears, a school district north of Seattle closed for training on conducting remote lessons via computer in case schools have to be shut down for an extended period, while a private school said it would conduct online-only classes through the end of March.
The Homeland Security Department ordered its office in King County, Wash., to close for 14 days after learning that an employee had visited a relative at the Life Care Center in Kirkland.
Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told a House committee Tuesday that he had also directed employees at the office to self-quarantine for 14 days.
In Texas, many of the more than 120 American evacuees from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan were set to be released from quarantine Tuesday from Lackland Air Force Base, after state and local officials said the CDC modified its release protocol in response to their concerns.
The former passengers have been at the base in San Antonio for roughly two weeks since being evacuated from the cruise ship. Those being released have tested negative for the virus and have not shown symptoms while in quarantine.
WORLDWIDE CASES
Worldwide, more than 93,000 people have been sickened and 3,100 have died, the vast majority of them in China. Most cases have been mild.
In China, the count of new cases dropped again today, with just 119 reported. It is still by far the hardest-hit country, with more than 80,000 infections and about 95% of the world’s deaths. But the crisis seemed to shift westward, with fast-growing clusters of infections and deaths in South Korea, Iran and Italy.
“What China shows is that early containment and identification of cases can work, but we now need to implement that in other countries,” said Dr. Nathalie MacDermott, an infectious-diseases expert at King’s College London.
The death toll in Italy jumped to 79 on Tuesday, an increase of 27 deaths in one day, Italian officials said.
Those who had died in the previous 24 hours ranged in age from 55 to 101, said Angelo Borrelli, head of Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, who is coordinating the country’s response to the crisis.
Of the 2,502 infections so far — up from the 1,835 announced Monday — 90% were in the northern Italian regions of Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna, Borrelli said. Italy has had by far the largest outbreak outside of Asia.
Meanwhile, the Vatican said Tuesday that Pope Francis was ailing with a common cold and did not have “symptoms that could be related to other pathologies.”
On Tuesday, France, which has the second-highest number of cases in Europe, announced 21 new cases of coronavirus on its soil, raising the total number of cases to 212. A top official at France’s health ministry also announced one new fatality from the virus, a 92-year-old man in the western Morbihan region, raising the death toll up to four.
Iran’s supreme leader ordered the military to assist health officials in fighting the virus, which authorities said has killed 77 people. Among the dead are a confidant of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican and a recently elected member of Parliament.
South Korea confirmed another 142 cases this morning, raising its total to 5,328, the second-highest in the world.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he may further tighten limits on international travel, but he ruled out for now any restrictions on domestic travel within the United States.
The Trump administration has already imposed limits on travel from China, barred all travel to Iran and issued warnings to Americans not to travel to parts of Italy and South Korea. The president did not name additional countries that might be subject to travel restrictions but said his administration continued to watch Italy and South Korea, as well as Japan.
Information for this article was contributed by Gene Johnson, Carla K. Johnson, Rachel La Corte, Andrew Taylor and Lisa Mascaro of The Associated Press; by Katie Thomas and Knvul Sheikh of The New York Times; and by Seung Min Kim, Maria Sacchetti and Brady Dennis of The Washington Post.