As the COVID-19 pandemic has over two million confirmed cases worldwide, scientists and medical experts are hastening their pace on developing effective vaccines and drugs to control the spread.
Renowned biotech expert Dr. William A. Haseltine led a webinar hosted by the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy on Friday to share his opinions on the current policies of world leaders, as well as his visions for long-term recovery from this global crisis.
Haseltine is the president of ACCESS Health International, an organization that strives for equal access to medical treatment around the world.
He said the only way for a country to bend the curve is to aim for three major goals: identify people who are infected, rigorously trace their contacts, and initiate controlled quarantine.
“Everybody who’s been in contact with (confirmed patients), regardless of their infection status, should be isolated and put into controlled quarantine,” he said.
USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy is a partnership between USC and Brookings - the D.C.-based non-profit that sponsors various influential studies in public policy. The initiative hopes to use its long list of expert contacts to provide insight on national health crises like the pandemic.
The U.S. death toll reached a new single-day record on Friday with around 4,591 people killed over the last 24 hours, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
States across the nation are maintaining “stay at home” orders to try and stem this growing rate. This has conflicted with national leadership, as President Donald Trump tweeted to protestors on Friday, prodding them to “LIBERATE” themselves from these restrictions in Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia and reopen the economy. Trump has also backed conservative groups on mitigation measures to follow the new guidelines of his COVID response plan, dubbed “Opening Up America Again.”
“It looks to me as giving the states free reign to do what they want,” Haseltine said about Trump’s actions. “But there are a couple of words left out of that guidelines the president issued, one is quarantine, and especially controlled quarantine.”
The flattening curve in Italy and Spain, as well as in some states of the U.S., is not a sign of recovery, according to Haseltine. In order to see a sharp decline in new cases and deaths, he believes more aggressive measures should be adopted.
“If you look at the countries that are now having the most success, they also have extremely rigid control over external immigration, and even internal movements.” Haseltine said.
Haseltine also emphasized the need for federal support when it comes to large-scale testing for infection or immunity at an affordable cost.
“We need the equivalent of the Manhattan Project by our federal government,” he said.“No state government has the resources.”
His hope is for the U.S. to be able to test 50 million people a day so that the virus could be traced down to every part of the population.
“It’s not an impossibility and given the enormous cost that we are paying -- eight to ten trillion dollars already -- that is a minor cost,” he said.
Regarding how we can protect healthcare workers who are now in the frontline, Haseltine believes the country could either adopt hyperimmune globulin from people who successfully recovered and had antibodies that are neutralizing the virus, or drugs that have shown efficacy in preclinical tests to be used therapeutically.
“One in five of those people that are infected are health care workers, and that’s nearly 60 thousand people now. And about three-quarters of those are women. Fortunately, very few have died.” Haseltine said.
In addition, Haseltine brought up the issue of people who may be “re-positive” -- those who have recovered may not be immune from contracting COVID again. He is afraid that asymptomatic patients who might recover partially are being released from the hospital without antibodies, and can then either be re-infected or still have the virus lurking.
The development of effective drugs is an ongoing process, as well, he said. Many of his previous students graduated from Harvard Medical School are working day and night for a solution. They adopted knowledge from previous successful methods of combating SARS and Ebola to create immunoglobulin therapy, which is to mix antibodies for a possible treatment.
There are also many clinical trials conducted under appropriated groups to create a vaccine, and Haseltine is positive on getting one in a year to come. “The question is, will it protect? How many people and for how long?”
Brookings will continue to offer virtual webinars on multiple days a week focusing on COVID-19. An upcoming discussion on April 20 will address climate change under the COVID-19 era.