October 10 coronavirus news

President Donald Trump’s doctor on Saturday said he’s met criteria from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to leave isolation. Those criteria don’t generally require a negative test for coronavirus. 

Here’s why:

People can continue to test positive even though they’re no longer infectious

Research has shown that PCR tests can still pick up pieces of genetic material from the virus long after someone has recovered. But these people aren’t likely to be infectious 10 to 20 days after symptoms began, according to the CDC.

To figure that out, scientists have taken samples from coronavirus patients and tried to infect living cells. Even though PCR tests can come back positive, patients don’t tend to be infectious after that 10 to 20 day window has passed, research has found.

Think of it this way: A PCR test is looking for the blueprint of the virus -- its “genome” -- and not the virus itself. In fact, the test is just looking for fragments of that blueprint. It’s like a recipe for chocolate cake; finding the recipe in someone’s kitchen doesn’t mean you’ll find a cake.

Why might Trump not need to isolate for 20 days?

For patients with severe Covid-19, the CDC says up to 20 days of isolation “may be warranted.” But the agency’s recommendations only require that at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared.

“Consider consultation with infection control experts,” the CDC’s recommendations say. The President’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, released a memo Saturday that referenced “advanced diagnostic tests” and stated “there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus” from Trump.

Still, the letter didn’t fully describe those advanced diagnostic tests or their exact findings. Conley also didn’t disclose other vital signs from the President, such as his current oxygen levels -- leaving many questions about Trump’s current condition unanswered.

Read more about Trump's coronavirus status here:

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Trump has met CDC criteria to end isolation and is cleared to return to an active schedule by his physician

A former acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said he’s not surprised to see opinion polls showing the public don’t trust the federal agency's Covid-19 information.

“It's understandable when you see instance after instance of political interference in CDC’s work,” Dr. Richard Besser told CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta Saturday during a Coronavirus: Facts and Fears town hall.

A tweet from a viewer, responding to the question of trust in the CDC, was also read aloud.

“I feel the integrity of the CDC has been compromised by the scoffing, lackadaisical attitude of the current administration. Under any other administration, yes, absolutely. Now, no,” the tweet read.

Besser, who pointed out that thousands of CDC scientists continue to do “great work,” said he thinks the trust can be regained.

“If there was an approach going forward where CDC was allowed to lead, where it was clear that there was a firewall between the work CDC was doing and the political level, that would be attainable,” he said.

Politics is “part and parcel of public health,” former CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan said Saturday during CNN’s town hall, Coronavirus: Facts and Fears.

“There has to be interplay and partnership between a receptive and intelligent political group, and the science of public health,” Koplan said. “We get our budgets appropriated from Congress. The states do and communities do.”

Koplan said he believes this pandemic will serve as a wake-up call for politicians and public health officials.

Coronavirus infections in the United States are much higher than the 7.6 million recorded so far by Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project, according to Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Almost certainly there have actually been more than 40 million people infected by this virus in the US,” Frieden said Saturday during CNN’s town hall.

“And that's why there have been well over 200,000 deaths,” Frieden said. “The death rate is a fact and it's a tragedy and we need not to get hardened to the reality that these are health care workers, these are mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, and it's going on every day.”

Frieden also predicted that with the current surge in cases across the country, as many as 20,000 more people could die from the virus by the end of the month.

Frieden said the most important thing anyone can do is to follow the science and the public health guidelines for mitigating the spread.

“That's why we all have to recognize that we're in this together. There's only one enemy, and that's the virus," he said.

The White House administration needs to regain the trust of the American people when it comes to the development of a coronavirus vaccine through transparency, Dr. Julie Gerberding, an infectious disease expert who now is an executive vice president at Merck & Co Inc., told CNN today during its global coronavirus town hall.

Gerberding added: "Science is on our side."

Watch:

Dr. David Satcher, a former director of the US Centers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who served as surgeon general under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said he hopes that a Covid-19 vaccine "can make a difference."

Where development of a Covid-19 vaccine stands now: Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine candidate begins Phase 3 trials in the United States on Sept. 23. Trials for the single-dose vaccine will include up to 60,000 adult participants at nearly 215 sites in the US and internationally.

Phase 3 trials will begin immediately, with the first participants receiving doses on Wednesday, Johnson & Johnson Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Paul Stoffels said on a call with reporters. The vaccine candidate was developed by Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson is now the fourth company to begin large-scale clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine in the United States, behind Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca.

While the other vaccine candidates require two doses, Johnson & Johnson's candidate will be studied as a single-dose vaccine, which should expedite results, said Stoffels.

Watch:

The true number of coronavirus deaths in the United States is well over 250,000, former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Saturday during CNN’s town hall.

Frieden, who served as CDC director under President Barack Obama, said a lot of the confusion about Covid-19 mortality rates is the result of the way fatalities are listed on death certificates.

“If you die from cancer, and you also have diabetes, you still died from cancer,” Frieden explained. “If you died from Covid, and you also had diabetes, you died from Covid.”

“Covid does affect older people much, much more than younger people, and many older people have lots of other health problems, so that ends up on the death certificate,” Frieden said.

“The best way to look at this is actually a statistic called ‘excess mortality’ -- deaths above baseline -- and that's actually quite a bit higher,” he said. “The true total of this, which includes Covid and Covid-associated (deaths), is well over a quarter of a million deaths in the US so far.”

Frieden said there are typically three types of deaths that result from coronavirus.

“People who died from Covid, and were diagnosed with it; people who died from Covid, but weren't diagnosed with it because there wasn't testing, it wasn't suspected, they died at home; and people who've died because of the disruption that Covid causes,” Frieden said.

An additional 20,000 Covid-19 deaths by the end of the month are “inevitable,” according to a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“From the infections that have already occurred, we will see something like 20,000 deaths by the end of the month -- additional deaths,” Dr. Tom Frieden said Saturday, during CNN’s Coronavirus: Facts and Fears town hall.

“Anytime we ignore, minimize or underestimate this virus, we do so at our peril and the peril of people whose lives depend on us,” Frieden said. “If you look around the world, the parts of the world -- and even the parts of the US -- that have been guided by public health and have supported public health have done better,” he said.

Fellow former CDC Director Dr. Richard Besser noted that projections aren’t set in stone.

“What we do matters. And if we follow the lead of public health, if we follow the lead of CDC and do the things that are working around the globe, in terms of wearing masks and social distancing and washing hands and investigating cases -- ensuring people have what they need to isolate and quarantine -- that we can have a very different trajectory and we can get this in control,” Besser said.

As of Saturday night, more than 214,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.

People in the United States should “absolutely” be afraid of the coronavirus, despite President Trump’s assertion that Americans shouldn’t let it dominate their lives, said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“There are 210,000 people who've passed away, who hopefully needn't have in different circumstances,” Koplan said during CNN’s Coronavirus: Facts and Fears town hall Saturday.

Circumstances conducive to saving lives include listening to public health experts and embracing public health measures.

“But if your bosses -- if the people up the chain of command aren't supporting you, if the people up the chain of command are spreading false information, belittling important news and actions that need to be taken -- it doesn't work,” said Koplan, who is vice president of the Emory Global Health Institute.

Koplan said changing course is “doable.”

“We can do something about it. We can start right now, and should have. And in some parts of the country, the appropriate things are being done. But … when your leadership is working against you in this virus, the virus has an ally that makes it a pretty strong contender for further destruction.”