Consider This from NPR - Antibody Tests Coming "Very Soon"; Is The Coronavirus Seasonal?

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

Antibody tests that could help determine who has had the virus are being developed Dr. Anthony Fauci said. There's hope those people will have some measure of immunity.The CDC issued return-to-work guidelines for critical workers who had contact with someone who had a confirmed or even suspected case of COVID-19.Scientists are trying to figure out whether changing seasons will affect the spread of the coronavirus.Plus, how public health experts create models to help us predict where the outbreak is headed. Wuhan resident Piso Nseke's conversation with Mary Louise Kelly about his first day outside after almost three months of lockdown.Find and support your local public radio stationSign up for 'The New Normal' newsletterThis episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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One week ago, the number was 10 million. Now it's 17 million. 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks. People have been asked to put their lives and their livelihoods on hold at significant economic and personal cost. As a society, we should do everything we can to provide relief to those who are suffering for the public good. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced a new plan to get more money,

$600 billion, to small and medium-sized businesses that keep paying workers. And Congress is also negotiating more aid. Coming up, what we know about whether the virus will fade this summer and why scientific models of the pandemic keep changing. I'm Kelly McEvers. This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. It's Thursday, April 9th. Since this outbreak started, many essential workers, Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.

Since this outbreak started, many essential workers, from first responders to food processors, janitors, and communications workers, have had to stay home from work because they were exposed to someone who was confirmed or even suspected to have had COVID-19. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Now there are new federal guidelines for when they can go back to work. So what CDC has done is that we've really looked at the essential workforce and how to maintain that workforce. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said workers who are in what are called critical infrastructure jobs and who have been exposed

to the virus need to wear a mask for two weeks, take their temperature before work every day, and social distance at work. So that we won't have worker shortage in these critical industries. So that's the new guidelines that CDC will be posting today. For everyone else, the official stay-at-home guidelines are still in effect for at least three more weeks until April 30th. And that is partly because people can have the virus without knowing it. It is likely that we need to prove it that once you've been infected and you have an antibody profile that you are very likely protected against

subsequent challenge to the same virus which means you may have a cohort of people who are actually protected. But without being able to test people for antibodies, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on the Today Show, we haven't been able to know who might be immune. That, he said, could soon change. The antibody tests are developed. There are several out there. We are told by the people, the companies that make them, that very soon, when they say soon, they're talking days to weeks, that we'd be able to have a large number of these tests available. And you're right, what they do, they don't test. That information will be critical to getting back to normal. One big question about the coronavirus that experts are trying to answer is whether it's seasonal.

The worst outbreaks so far have been in colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere during winter or early spring. If this virus behaves like the flu, warmer weather might slow its transmission. But that depends on one of two theories about how this virus spreads. Here's NPR's Jason Bobian. One theory would support that the coronavirus would come and go with the seasons. The other does not. Let's start with the airborne theory. This one suggests seasonality. Akiko Iwasaki is a professor of immunobiology at the Yale University School of Medicine. She says it's been recognized for hundreds of years that people get sick in the winter. During the winter months, we tend to have a surge in the cases of respiratory infection,

including the influenza viruses. There are a number of reasons why, but Iwasaki says the main driver of this is that changes in the amount of water vapor in the air in winter make it easier for viruses to become airborne. When you cough or sneeze or even talk, you're generating these droplets that's coming out of your mouth. And some of that, if you're infected, will contain virus particles. And if those virus particles go out into dry, cold air, it's easier for them to linger. And in very arid conditions, those particles lose the water vapor and they become airborne. And so they can persist in the air for a very long

time. Now she's talking about traditional cold and flu viruses that have been studied for years. The question is whether the new coronavirus will also behave in this way. Iwasaki expects it will. And so I would expect that this coronavirus can also stay in the air better at lower relative humidity, meaning the indoor conditions that you find in the winter months. So if this virus depends on this airborne route, we would expect to see transmission slow or even stop in the summer when the air is warmer and carries more moisture. And there's research to back this up. In laboratories, scientists have seen that temperature and humidity affect how long the new coronavirus can hang in the air. The other main theory of transmission is that the virus is spread on large droplets.

Under this model, let's say a person with COVID-19 is eating in a restaurant. They're far more likely to infect someone at their own table than someone across the room. If the new coronavirus primarily spreads this way, on large droplets, seasonality may not matter. But some researchers caution against assuming that any new virus, regardless of how it spreads, will follow a seasonal pattern. A new virus coming into the population, everybody is susceptible. Anise Lowen is an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Emory University. She says with a new virus, no one has had a chance to develop immunity. Everybody is sort of fair game for an infection to that virus. So it makes the virus transmit much more readily, such that it may continue to transmit even when the climactic conditions of the season is not optimal for transmission. She says this virus may well continue to spread

straight through the summer here in the U.S. Lowen points out that when the H1N1 influenza virus emerged in 2009, it didn't start in winter the way the seasonal flu does. The 2009 pandemic started in April and May, well outside the normal seasonality. Eventually, the H1N1 virus did fall into a more traditional seasonal pattern, but it took several years. As the northern hemisphere moves into summer, researchers will be watching closely whether transmission of the new coronavirus drops as the temperature goes up. NPR's Jason Bobian.

So much of the information we are all consuming about this pandemic comes from models. Models that predict the number of cases, the need for hospital beds, the number of people who are going to die. All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro talked to NPR's global health correspondent, Narit Eisenman, about how these models are created. The first thing to say is these are computer simulations that are only as good as the data that's plugged into them. For instance, a lot of them consider how many infections or deaths there have been in a particular state, how that's changed over time, but we might not have enough tests to accurately say what the case count or even the death count has been. Also, each model is based on all sorts of assumptions about how this spreads, how much of an impact social distancing has, and scientists are still gathering information about that and updating their formulas every day. So the modelers would be the first ones to warn us, these simulations are not forecasts. Their

purpose is just to help guide our strategy. Okay, so with all of those caveats in mind, what are some of the models showing right now? The Trump administration has released a bottom line estimate. You've probably heard that best case scenario, 100,000 to 240,000 people die. But officials on the Coronavirus Task Force haven't revealed how they came up with that calculation and the timing. So I'll tell you about one outside model that the task force has at least frequently cited. It's been put together by Chris Murray at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. And he and his team project that if statewide social distancing rules are put in place in all states that don't currently have them and kept in place

through June 1st, nationwide, the U.S. will see the highest daily death toll on April 12th. Then deaths will start to decline each day, such that by mid-June, this wave of infections will be quashed. And somewhere between 31,000 to note, that a number of states, including New York, Louisiana, Montana, Colorado, Washington, D.C., that they have already now hit their peak number of daily deaths. But I should also add that another important model has a different finding. All right. Well, what does that other important model show? Right. So this other model, which the administration has also consulted, was put together by a team at Columbia University. Their projections only look at what happens six weeks out, but they find that a lot of those states I just mentioned won't hit their peak number of daily deaths until at least mid-May, maybe longer. And even if those states take much more drastic steps to social distance, it'll be more like late this month before daily deaths

peak there. Okay, so it sounds like it's really tough to pin down when this wave of infections will pass. But whenever it does, society needs to somehow reopen. How are these people thinking about what needs to happen then? Yeah, so the challenge to that is that the rough estimates are that even if we succeed in quashing this current wave of infections, the vast majority of people in the United States will not have been infected, which means that until there's a vaccine, we're still vulnerable. So now there's all sorts of ideas being floated and studied about how you could open up the economy a bit while still tamping down how much people interact face to face. I mean, these are ideas like maybe people who are older than 45 or 50

are still asked to stay home and everyone else works. Or maybe everyone whose last name begins with A through M works on even days. Everyone whose name begins with N through Z works on odd days. Or we all work for four days and then we go back to massive social distancing for 10 days. And also we're going to need a really robust system for quickly detecting any flare-ups, testing people with symptoms, identifying their contacts, maybe even coming up with housing to put those contacts into during quarantine so they don't infect their families. And there's no sign the U.S. is anywhere near setting all that up. NPR's Narit Eisenman. This week in Wuhan, China, Piso Seke went outside for the first time in months.

It was like a kid trying to cross the street without their parents. You know, the feeling, it's like we're scared. And it was a little bit exciting. Piso was one of the millions of people who was trapped in Wuhan when the city sealed itself off from the world for 76 days. During that time, he's been checking in with host Mary Louise Kelly on NPR's All Things Considered. And even now, he's been checking in with host Mary Louise Kelly on NPR's All Things Considered. And even now, he said, things are far from normal. We still have a lot of asymptomatic

cases, like silent carriers. So not all the shops were open, not the gyms and certain places were still closed. But just being outside was pretty great. Piso wore a mask, took a walk down the street in his neighborhood. And... Actually, I ordered a pizza. Oh, wow. That must have tasted good. I know. After like so long, almost three months. Hawaiian pizza. Extra cheese always. It felt good.

A link where you can hear more of Piso's conversation with Mary Louise Kelly is in our episode notes. There, we also have that link to find and support your local public radio station. Keep up with more coronavirus coverage on your local public radio station. We will be back tomorrow. I'm Kelly McEvers.