Coronavirus screening may miss two-thirds of infected travelers entering U.S.
*This is part of our Coronavirus Update <https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/series/coronavirus/> series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring.* As many thousands of students prepare to decamp for warmer climes over spring break, a Harvard epidemiologist warned that traveler screening may catch just one in three symptomatic cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, meaning there already could be hundreds of U.S. cases that slipped through earlier screenings. Marc Lipsitch <https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/people/marc-lipsitch/>, head of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health <http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/>’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics <https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/>, said Wednesday that recent modeling compared the number of people likely exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms with the number caught by traveler-screening programs, using the robust screening program in Singapore as a global gold standard. The result showed that most countries’ procedures miss two-thirds of travelers exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms, a finding that Lipsitch said may explain the recent appearance of a cluster of cases in Washington, where 10 people have died. Lipsitch said travelers sick with COVID-19 likely arrived in the U.S. four to six weeks earlier and simply were missed in screening, leading to the Seattle area outbreak. “I think you could have certainly hundreds, if not more, cases around the United States by this point,” Lipsitch said. “The problem with giving a firm number … is that there’s a lot of randomness in whether a particular case does or doesn’t spark a chain of transmission.” _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
