A 38-year-old geneticist from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Clement Chow, unknowingly highlighted an issue with the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Nine days after attending a meeting with two dozen other geneticists, Chow tweeted, “I’ve been in the ICU fighting … wait for it … Coronavirus!”
Unfortunately for the other geneticists, they found out that Chow was infected four days after he was hospitalized. One of the geneticists had just spent time with her elderly mother and father-in-law, who has two underlying conditions. She wondered if she had unwittingly infected her family members. She also wondered why she had to find out about it on Twitter, of all places. It took another whole day before the Utah public health department emailed the scientists.
The group of geneticists also came from 16 states, which means they had ample time to spread the virus across the country.
Hospitals in the United States are struggling to diagnose people with COVID-19 quickly and identify people that infected patients have been in contact with. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that containment measures like identifying people who may have been infected and enforcing a two-week quarantine are vital to stop the spread of the virus. China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea all emerged from the pandemic by testing people quickly, performing contract tracing, and quarantining the whole population. The United States, by comparison, has only introduced social distancing measures, with all the states taking a variety of approaches.
The message in the U.S. has not been clear. Some people who were infected were told to self-quarantine for two weeks or until they test negative. Only a few states have a contact alerting system in place. In Singapore, after a person tested positive for COVID-19, the medical teams only had two hours to figure out who the patient may have infected.
At the heart of the problem for the U.S. is its inability to diagnose people quickly. Results can take as little as three days, but in some areas, results take longer. This is valuable time wasted, where infected people could be affecting others, especially those who may be more vulnerable due to underlying health conditions.
If the United States doesn’t develop faster testing methods and invest in contact-tracing, the outbreak could worsen to the point where the lockdown may last much longer or become even stricter.