CDC analysis cites missed opportunities to slow COVID-19 spread

The U.S. government was slow to understand how much coronavirus was spreading from Europe, which helped drive the acceleration of outbreaks across the nation, according to a May 1 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 Response Team.

The findings, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), recapped some of the major decisions and events of the last few months and suggested the nation’s top public health agency is among those that missed opportunities to slow the spread.

"Various factors contributed to accelerated spread during February–March 2020, including continued travel-associated importations, large gatherings, introductions into high-risk workplaces and densely populated areas, and cryptic transmission resulting from limited testing and asymptomatic and presymptomatic spread. Targeted and communitywide mitigation efforts were needed to slow transmission," the authors wrote.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly celebrated a federal decision, announced on Jan. 31, to stop entry into the U.S. of any foreign nationals who had traveled to China in the previous 14 days. That took effect Feb. 2. China had imposed its own travel restrictions earlier, and travel out of its outbreak areas did indeed drop dramatically.

But the MMWR article noted that nearly 2 million travelers arrived in the U.S. from Italy and other European countries during February. The U.S. government didn't block travel from there until March 11.

“The extensive travel from Europe, once Europe was having outbreaks, really accelerated our importations and the rapid spread,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC and first author of the MMWR report, told the AP. ”I think the timing of our travel alerts should have been earlier."

The article noted that more than 100 people who had been on nine separate Nile River cruises during February and early March had come to the U.S. and tested positive for the virus, nearly doubling the number of known U.S. cases at that time. The article also noted the explosive effect of some late February mass gatherings, including a scientific meeting in Boston, the Mardis Gras celebration in New Orleans and a funeral in Albany, Georgia. The gatherings spawned many cases, and led to decisions in mid-March to restrict crowds.

“I think in retrospect, taking action earlier could have delayed further amplification (of the U.S. outbreak), or delayed the speed of it," Schuchat said.

But she also acknowledged that there was an evolving public understanding of just how bad things were, as well as a change in what kind of measures — including stay-at-home orders — people were willing to accept.

“I think that people's willingness to accept the mitigation is unfortunately greater once they see the harm the virus can do," she said. “There will be debates about should we have started much sooner, or did we go too far too fast."

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/health-official-says-us-missed-some-ch...

Read the report: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6918e2.htm?s_cid=mm6918e2_w