Category: Covid-19

The IRS has established a special section focused on steps to help taxpayers, businesses and others affected by the coronavirus. This page will be updated as new information is available. For other information about the COVID-19 virus, people should visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (https://www.coronavirus.gov) for health information. Other information about actions being taken by the U.S. government is available at https://www.usa.gov/coronavirus and in Spanish athttps://gobierno.usa.gov/coronavirus. The Department of Treasury also has information available at Coronavirus: Resources, Updates, and What You Should Know.

The distribution of economic impact payments will begin in the next three weeks and will be distributed automatically, with no action required for most people. Social Security beneficiaries who are not typically required to file tax returns will not need to file to receive a payment. Instead, payments will be automatically deposited into their bank accounts. However, some people who typically do not file returns will need to submit a simple tax return to receive the economic impact payment. When more specific details become available, we will update this page.

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Coronavirus Tax Relief | Internal Revenue Service

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WHSV) As of Monday, April 6, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) had confirmed 345 cases of COVID-19 across the Mountain State.

According to the department's afternoon update, 21 new coronavirus cases were identified from Sunday to Monday.

For our local area, Hardy County saw its first confirmed case last Tuesday and Pendleton County had its first confirmed case last Wednesday evening.

According to the Hardy County Health Department, a patient who had been traveling has been self-quarantined since arriving home in Hardy County and has followed all proper CDC protocols since that time to protect their community members. No details were provided on the Pendleton County patient, though her daughter identified her on Facebook.

WHSV has repeatedly reached out to the company that community members identified as the Pendleton County patient's employer, but has received no response.

By Thursday, a second positive case was confirmed in Hardy County as well. There are still no confirmed cases in Grant County.

As of Monday morning, 9,940 West Virginia residents had been tested for COVID-19.

There have been 345 positive results, as well as 9,595 negative test results and three confirmed deaths due to the virus.

It comes out to 3.47% of people tested for the virus receiving positive results.

Medical providers in the state are required to report test results to their local health departments, which then provide them to DHHR, which updates their state website at some point during the day.

Some days, the updates come in the afternoon and some days, it comes in the morning.

Private commercial labs also have to send their test results to DHHR. However, state officials say the negative and pending tests from commercial labs are under-reported because some labs cannot electronically submit negative results.

Where are the confirmed cases?

These are the confirmed cases by West Virginia county:

Barbour (2)Berkeley (54)Cabell (7)Greenbrier (3)Hancock (6)Hardy (2)Harrison (25)Jackson (16)Jefferson (22)Kanawha (56)Lewis (1)Logan (6)Marion (17)Marshall (5)Mason (4)Mercer (4)Mineral (2)Monongalia (53)Morgan (3)Ohio (15)Pendleton (1)Pleasants (1)Preston (4)Putnam (8)Raleigh (4)Randolph (3)Roane (2)Taylor (1)Tucker (3)Upshur (1)Wetzel (2)Wirt (1)Wood (11)

The DHHR notes that surveillance at the local health department level may reveal over time that some initial test results in counties were for residents of another county or another state.

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345 cases of COVID-19 confirmed across West Virginia - WHSV

Read: How the pandemic will end

The governments social-distancing requirements, these pro-Trump talkers insist, are likely more harmful than the virus itself. Ten million people have lost their jobs, Limbaugh announced on April 2. Thats not enough for people like Bill Gates. Thats not enough for people who want to shoot down the entire country. Over the weekend, both Ingraham and Levin circulated a Federalist article headlined Why Severe Social Distancing Might Actually Result In More Coronavirus Deaths. On April 1, Beck urged policy makers to start putting hard dates on some of these [social-distancing] measures because we have got to get back to work A forced economic recession isnt a gamble that I signed up for.

Limbaugh, Ingraham, Levin, and Beck havent criticized Trump personally for acknowledging the severity of the pandemic. But neither are they giving credence to his newly dire estimates of the COVID-19 threat. The reason may be that they have different incentives than he does. Conservative talkers answer to their conservative audience, which, according to polls, remains more skeptical than Democrats of government restrictions on movement. Trump must worry about public opinion as a whole, which strongly favors government-imposed social distancing. Trumps decision to abandon his goal of reopening the country by Easter, according to Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman of the Times, came after political advisers described for him polling that showed that voters overwhelmingly preferred to keep containment measures in place over sending people back to work prematurely.

Trump must also balance his habitual suspicion of government experts against the fact that Americans trust those expertsin particular, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Faucifar more than they trust him in the battle against COVID-19. For Trump to reject their advice entirely might hurt his own standing, especially among the Democrats and independents who have helped boost his approval rating since the virus hit Americas shores.

Conservative talk radio, by contrast, is built on distrust of experts. Left-wing populists attack economic elites; right-wing populists attack cultural elites, especially those whom progressives venerate. In recent years, as progressives have championed the scientific consensus that climate change poses a grave danger, many conservatives have come to see scientists as yet another collection of snobs using the veneer of expertise to impose its liberal ideology on the country. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that while a large majority of Democrats believed that scientists were better than other people at making good policy decisions about scientific issues, a large majority of Republicans disagreed.

Over the past week, this populist distrust of scientific experts has suffused conservative talk radios downplaying of the COVID-19 threat. The experts are routinely wrong on issues big and smallon wearing masks, on reusable grocery bags virus modeling and treatments, Ingraham tweeted on April 3. So when experts issue edicts, remember their often spectacular record of failure. On April 1, Beck urged politicians to stop relying on flawed modeling data to make these decisions and instead listen to the people in your local communities. On April 5, Levin warned that the media, experts, and Democrats are trying to make it impossible for the president to even consider rational options for opening parts of the economy. On April 3, Ingraham declared, The experts arent capable of thinking beyond the virus to an even worse death spiral affecting millions of lives here and abroad.

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In Right-Wing Media, the Pivot Didnt Happen - The Atlantic

Concerns are being raised that people isolating at home with worsening Covid-19 symptoms may not call for medical help early enough when they enter the second, more severe, phase of the virus, possibly reducing their chances of survival.

The NHS does not have a proper monitoring system for those suspected of having coronavirus, said Dr Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter medical school.

If a patient is developing pneumonia, it can get progressively worse very quickly and hence early admission upon the first signs of difficulty with breathing are very important, he said.

It is important for people recovering at home that there be a monitoring system in place too. Something that we have thus far not introduced.

Symptoms are defined by the NHS as either:

NHS advice is that anyone with symptoms shouldstay at home for at least 7 days.

If you live with other people,they should stay at home for at least 14 days, to avoid spreading the infection outside the home.

After 14 days, anyone you live with who does not have symptoms can return to their normal routine. But, if anyone in your home gets symptoms, they should stay at home for 7 days from the day their symptoms start.Even if it means they're at home for longer than 14 days.

If you live with someone who is 70 or over, has a long-term condition, is pregnant or has a weakened immune system, try to find somewhere else for them to stay for 14 days.

If you have to stay at home together, try to keep away from each other as much as possible.

After 7 days, if you no longer have a high temperature you can return to your normal routine.

If you still have a high temperature, stay at home until your temperature returns to normal.

If you still have a cough after 7 days, but your temperature is normal, you do not need to continue staying at home. A cough can last for several weeks after the infection has gone.

Staying at home means you should:

You can use your garden, if you have one. You can also leave the house to exercise but stay at least 2 metres away from other people.

If you have symptoms of coronavirus, use theNHS 111 coronavirus serviceto find out what to do.

Source:NHS Englandon 23 March 2020

There is a danger that people will arrive in hospital only when their symptoms are very severe, with more of a risk that they will end up in critical care and possibly die, he said.

The early symptoms of mild disease are a persistent dry cough, a raised temperature and shortness of breath. The advice to anyone with those symptoms is to self-isolate at home. They are not told to inform the health service.

Most people recover within a week, but if their symptoms worsen or they still have a high temperature at the end of that time, the instruction is to fill in a form on the NHS 111 coronavirus website if they can and to call NHS 111 only if they cannot do that. Depending on their answers, they may get a visit from a doctor or be admitted to hospital.

Covid-19 is said to be mild to moderate in 80% of people, but can cause viral pneumonia. In the most serious cases, the immune system fighting the virus overreacts. If that happens, what is known as a cytokine storm attacks their organs. The individual will need ventilation in hospital to take over their breathing and possibly mechanical support for their heart, liver or kidneys.

People with symptoms at home will not get medical help unless they ask for it, unlike in some other countries, which have testing for people with symptoms and monitoring for them while at home.

Health authorities in the southern German city of Heidelberg have introduced a corona taxi service, which allows medical personnel to visit patients with the virus at home and assess their progress. This was introduced after virologists and other doctors recognised that it often comes in two waves and that typically on the eighth day, patients health can take a turn for the worse.

Patients with confirmed infections or suspected to have coronavirus are being called on a regular basis by student doctors manning phone lines, and based on their accounts, a taxi crew can then arrange to visit them.

Four of the taxis small buses usually used for school runs are constantly travelling around the city visiting patients.

These daily phone calls and house visits would totally overwhelm the doctors here, said Uta Merle, a medical director for gastroenterology and infections at Heidelberg University hospital, which is why medical students are being drafted in. Eight hundred have so far volunteered.

Hans-Georg Krusslich, the head of virology at the hospital, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the visits are necessary because often patients dont have the courage to ring up the clinic and dont actually take their worsening state seriously.

Thanks to the taxis, he said, our colleagues have discovered quite a few patients who they were able to protect from a drastic worsening of their conditions.

Many have been brought into hospital and put on ventilators as a result. That crucial move made just in time is believed to have saved many lives in Germany. The taxi crews have received letters of thanks from patients, crediting them with saving their lives.

Pankhania said people in the UK are no longer going to hospital for conditions other than Covid-19 in the sort of numbers that would be expected. For whatever reason, we have frightened off the patient. Those things we should be seeing are not turning up. These people are soldiering on, he said.

He has himself heard of cases where people were very sick with symptoms resembling those of Covid-19, but did not seek medical help and died at home.

He said it was possible that some people were put off from calling NHS 111 when their symptoms worsened or if they still had a fever after a week which are the first clues that their condition may be becoming severe.

He also does not think it is satisfactory for people with symptoms not to be tested. I dont think that is good enough, he said. I used to be a GP. I would want to know who my patients with Covid-19 were. I would call them and ask them how they were. Unfortunately, that doesnt happen. The GP may or may not be aware of the patient.

The Office for National Statistics has recently begun to include deaths from Covid-19 in the community, including care homes. They show the total was more than 20% higher than the figure for hospital deaths alone.

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Fears that Britons self-isolating with Covid-19 may seek help too late - The Guardian

April 6 numbers: Five more deaths in Utah from COVID-19, with 1,675 confirmed cases  KUTV 2News

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April 6 numbers: Five more deaths in Utah from COVID-19, with 1,675 confirmed cases - KUTV 2News

As the growth in the number of new coronavirus infections ebbed in some places, others prepared for what could be one of the worst weeks of the pandemic.

U.S. officials warned of a potential spike in COVID-19 deaths with the surgeon general warning, "This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment."

Hospitals expect to be overwhelmed as cases reach projected peaks, according to a federal report released Monday. Three out of four U.S. hospitals surveyed are already treating patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19, according to a survey of 323 hospitals around the country by the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services.

(MORE: Deadly Cyclone Harold Hammers Vanuatu)

Problems such as insufficient tests, slow results, scarcity of protective gear, the shortage of breathing machines for seriously ill patients and burned-out staffs are feeding off each other, the watchdog agency found.

"There's this sort of domino effect," Ann Maxwell, an assistant inspector general at HHS, told the Associated Press. "These challenges play off each other and exacerbate the situation. There's a cascade effect."

"Hospitals anticipated being overwhelmed by a surge in COVID-19 patients, who would need specialty beds and isolation areas for effective treatment," the report said.

"Its likely that every hospital in America is going to have to deal with this," Maxwell said.

Worldwide, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 1.3 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 73,000 people have died.

In the U.S., the number of deaths exceeded 10,500. The number of infections reached more than 356,000.

United States:

-South Carolina will join 43 other states in ordering residents to stay home, Gov. Henry McMaster announced Monday afternoon. Residents may leave their homes for work, to visit family members or for outdoor recreation.

-Public schools in Arkansas will remain closed for the rest of the school year, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Monday. Schoolwork will be completed online under the state's alternative methods of instruction program, according to KATV. At least 12 states and one U.S. territory have ordered or recommended school building closures for the rest of the academic year, according to Education Week.

-National grocery store chain Kroger said it will limit the number of customers who can be in a store at one time to half of the building's capacity to help with social distancing.

-Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has stopped in-person voting on Tuesday amid coronavirus concerns, calling for suspending the statewide and local election until June 9, Politico reported. Evers had called state lawmakers back into session to postpone the election, but the Republican-controlled legislature declined to do so. Legislative leaders immediately challenged the governor's order in the state Supreme Court.

-New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said city officials may have to turn to "temporary burials" to deal with the strain placed on mortuary services and funeral homes by the number of deaths from the new coronavirus. De Blasio did not go into much detail saying only that COVID-19 victims could be buried where they could later be tracked and later moved for burial elsewhere. Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters Monday that he had not heard of such plans, according to the New York Times.

-New York, New Jersey and Detroit will see peaks in hospitalizations and COVID-19 deaths this week, Adm. Dr. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Monday on NBC's Today show. Giroir explained that peak "reflects infections that occurred two or three weeks ago, and, "we may be seeing the worst upon us right now in terms of outcomes." Giroir said, "We'll see some rolling peaks across the country as the next few weeks unfold."

A Texas Department of Public Safety State Trooper directs traffic at a checkpoint in Orange, Texas, near the Louisiana state border, Monday, April 6, 2020. The troopers are checking motorists crossing the border between Louisiana and Texas on I-10 to determine if they need to self-quarantine for 14 days to comply with an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

-Texas Department of Public Safety State Troopers are staffing road checkpoints along the border to enforce Gov. Greg Abbotts executive order requiring visitors from neighboring Louisiana to self-quarantine for 14 days. Drivers coming in from Louisiana have to fill out a form designating a quarantine location in Texas.

-Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer warned Monday that her state is running dangerously low on personal protective equipment, also called PPE. "At Beaumont Hospital we have less than 3 days until N95 masks run out. At Henry Ford Health System we have less than four days. And at the Detroit Medical Center, less than 10 days," she said. Face shields will run out in three days and surgical gowns will run out in less than six days at all three of those health systems, she said.

-With about 61% of the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt tested, 173 members have tested positive for the coronavirus, CNN reported. About 2,000 people have been evacuated from the aircraft carrier.

-The Pentagon says the number of COVID-19 cases in the active duty force is 1,132 as of Monday morning. The total was 978 on Friday. There also have been 303 cases among members of the National Guard. Among the military services, the Navy has the most cases, with 431. That includes the infected crew members of the Theodore Roosevelt.

-A 4-year-old Malayan tiger named Nadia at the Bronx Zoo has tested positive for COVID-19 in what is believed to be the first known infection in an animal in the U.S. or a tiger anywhere, federal officials and the zoo said Sunday. Nadia and six other tigers and lions that have also fallen ill are thought to have been infected by a zoo employee who wasn't yet showing symptoms, the zoo said. All are doing well and expected to recover. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said there are no known cases of the virus in U.S. pets or livestock, and there doesn't appear to be any evidence that suggests animals can spread the virus to people.

-Pro golf officials announced a reconfigured 2020 schedule Monday. The Open Championship has been canceled for this year. It had been scheduled for July 16-19 at Royal St George's Golf Club in Sandwich, England. Instead, the 149th Open will be played at Sandwich in July 2021. The PGA Championship will be the year's first major on Aug. 6-9, at Harding Park in San Francisco. The U.S. Open will be Sept. 17-20. The Masters has been moved to Nov. 12-15.

Worldwide:

-Boris Johnson, prime minister of the United Kingdom, was taken to intensive care Monday evening after his condition worsened, a spokesman said. Johnson, 55, tested positive for COVID-19 10 days ago. On Sunday, he was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in London with persistent symptoms of the coronavirus, including a high fever and cough. "Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the prime minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the intensive care unit at the hospital," a statement from Johnson's office said. The spokesman said Johnson has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputize for him "where necessary," Sky News reported. Johnson remained conscious and was moved to intensive care as a precaution should he require ventilation, according to Sky News.

-Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that parts of Danish society will gradually begin to reopen on April 15 when children return to daycare centers, kindergarten and schools up to fifth grade, the Copenhagen Post reported. Other restrictions, such as closed borders and limiting gatherings to 10 people, have been extended until May 10. Bigger events remain banned until August.

-German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it's too early to talk about an end date for restrictive measures in place to fight the coronavirus. "We would be a bad government if we did not intensively, day and night, consider how we can take steps to return to ordinary life while still protecting health, but she added she would be considered "a bad chancellor, and wed be a bad government," if she set an immediate date to end restrictions.

-Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he will declare a state of emergency for Tokyo and six other prefectures as early as Tuesday. Infections are soaring in the country that has the world's third-largest economy and its oldest population. He also announced details of a $989 billion economic stimulus package for the country.

-The daily number of deaths in Spain fell again Monday, marking the the fourth consecutive day. Mondays figure of 637 is the lowest recorded since March 24. Officials believe the virus may finally be peaking in Spain, which has the second-highest death toll in the world at 13,055. The latest figures show the country also registered 4,273 new confirmed cases, bringing the total to 135,032.

-Italy is also seeing the number of infections and deaths dropping. The pressure on northern Italys intensive care units has eased so much that Lombardy is no longer airlifting patients to other regions, The Associated Press reports. Italy's death toll is still the highest in the world at 16,523, after the Civil Protection agency announced 636 new deaths Monday. Italy also announced 3,599 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, the lowest daily increase since March 17, bringing the total number of cases in the hard-hit country to 132,547.

-India is reconsidering a blanket export ban on the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which has been touted by President Donald Trump as a possible therapy for the coronavirus. Trump called Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday and asked him to release stocks of the drug.

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Coronavirus Updates: Hospitals Fear Being Overwhelmed by COVID-19 Patients as Number of Cases Peak - The Weather Channel

Special report: The simulations driving the world's response to COVID-19  Nature.com

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Special report: The simulations driving the world's response to COVID-19 - Nature.com

Updated - April 5, 2020 J.Stewart BPharm

COVID-19 is the disease caused by an infection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, first identified in the city of Wuhan, in China's Hubei province in December 2019. COVID-19 was previously known as 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) respiratory disease before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the official name as COVID-19 in February 2020.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus belongs to the family of viruses called coronaviruses, which also includes the viruses that cause the common cold, and the viruses that cause more serious infections such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which was caused by SARS-CoV in 2002, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which was caused by MERS-CoV in 2012. Like the other coronaviruses, the SARS-CoV-2 virus primarily causes respiratory tract infections, and the severity of the COVID-19 disease can range from mild to fatal. Serious illness from the infection is caused by the onset of pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

The most common symptoms of COVID-19 include dry cough, fever, and shortness of breath. It is thought that symptoms can appear between 2-14 days after exposure although there have been isolated cases which suggest this may be longer. If you develop symptoms, you should stay at home to prevent the spread of the disease into the community. Wearing a facemask will help prevent the spread of the disease to others.Update: March 10, 2020 -- According to the latest research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (March 10, 2020), the median incubation period is estimated to be 5 days, and almost all (~98%) patients who have been infected will develop symptoms within 12 days.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is thought to spread from person-to-person via:

The best way to prevent infection is to avoid exposure to the virus.

The most important way to preventCOVID-19 is to WASH YOUR HANDS.

Wash your hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and water (lather for 20 seconds) OR use an alcohol based (at least 60%) hand sanitizer.

Other actions that help to prevent the spread ofCOVID-19:

What to do if you come into contact with someone who is sick

If you have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, or someone who is showing symptoms of COVID-19, it may take up to two weeks for your symptoms to present. To keep yourself and others safe, you should isolate yourself from other people for 14 days.

What does self-isolation mean?

Self-isolation means staying away from situations where you could infect other people. This means any situation where you may come in close contact with others (face to face contact closer than 3 feet for more than 15 minutes), such as social gatherings, work, school, child care/pre-school centres, university and other education providers, faith-based gatherings, aged care and health care facilities, prisons, sports gatherings, restaurants and all public gatherings.

You should not share dishes, drinking glasses, cups, eating utensils, towels, pillows or other items with other people in your home. After using these items, you should wash them thoroughly with soap and water, place them in the dishwasher for cleaning or wash them in your washing machine.

Scientists are still researching risk factors for COVID-19 but data from China CDC suggest that the elderly, and people suffering from pre-existing medical conditions (such as heart disease, respiratory disease including asthma and COPD, or diabetes) have a higher risk of dying from the disease. There isresearch that suggests that smokers may be more susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There is also evidence to suggest that people who usee-cigarettes (vaping)are at much higher risk of developing serious respiratory infections.Update: March 16, 2020 --A Chinese study claims to have found that people with type A blood may be more susceptible to the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).Update: March 22, 2016 -- CDC now includes people aged 65 years and older, people who live in a nursing home or long-term care facility, and people who are immunocompromised including those receiving cancer treatment as thosewho are at higher risk for severe illness. People with HIV may also be at higherrisk of serious illness.

Currently, there are no FDA approved treatments for COVID-19.Update: March 31, 2020 --FDA Approves Malaria Drugs to Treat COVID-19, Despite Little Proof They Work

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COVID-19: Prevention & Investigational Treatments | Drugs.com

Re-opening a nightclub in New York seems crazy at this point, as thats just the kind of setting in which Covid-19 can spread like wildfire. But it wouldnt be crazy if all of the workers and patrons had previously had Covid-19 and recovered from it.

Someday soon there will be millions of people in the U.S. who have recovered from Covid-19. The best evidence suggests that they cant get infected again soon and wont infect others by shedding the virus.

That suggests a path to run essential services more safely and to reopen sectors of the economy faster than would otherwise be possible. New York, Washington, California, and other states with high caseloads should rush to set up credible, verifiable, and voluntary programs to identify individuals as certified recovered from Covid-19. Researchers in Germany have recently proposed a similar program there.

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Federal policymakers are currently being pulled in two directions. One is to close much of the economy and shelter people at home to limit the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19. But we all recoil at the economic and human devastation this creates, so Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package geared mostly to keep the economy open and stimulate demand. Yet demand is hard to stimulate when so many things are closed, and it is dangerous to stimulate in ways that increase social contact and spread the virus.

Creating a path for the certified recovered from Covid-19 reduces the tension between jump-starting the economy and letting the virus run rampant.

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Certification could begin by drawing on existing tests and hospital records, starting with individuals who already had both a positive test and matching symptoms. Now that fast antibody and viral tests have FDA approval, new testing will pick up speed. If certification piggybacks on such tests, the U.S. could create a substantial and vital new specialized labor force of the certified recovered in the short term.

Although no one knows with absolute certainty if people with antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus can be re-infected by it, immunity to the coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) lasted two years. For SARS-CoV-2, monkeys infected with SARS-CoV-2 are known to have developed immunity. And according to Martin Hibberd, an infectious disease expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, people who have recovered are unlikely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 again.

These early indications justify starting now to build a certification system. We urgently need to get as many people safely back to work as possible.

Certified recovered people could take up frontline contact positions in medicine and retail to make operations safer. They could work with the elderly and the vulnerable. Certified recovered persons could also work in food preparation. A service that prepared and delivered food only with recovered people would be quite popular. Buses on routes going to hospitals could be driven by recovered drivers. Possibilities abound as trust rebuilds. Just knowing that more and more people have beaten the virus and are back to work would be an immense boost to confidence.

To be sure, health conditions are a private matter, and no one should be forced to certify themselves. That said, demand by individuals to be voluntarily tested and certified could be intense.

The program would be ideal if it allowed undocumented workers to participate without fear or risk. It was cruel to leave them out of the stimulus support. It was also unwise from a public health perspective, as undocumented families will be forced to join an underground economy and work in defiance of local shelter-in-place ordinances, thereby endangering everyone.

One concern is that the uninfected could face job discrimination in certain jobs once a system for verifying the certified recovered is created. Recently reissued guidance from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, however, suggests that the commission sees such discrimination as acceptable. If immunity is important to safely perform a job, then giving preference to those who are certified as recovered is justified, particularly in our present emergency. Getting more people working safely is paramount.

Quickly creating a certification system could speed economic recovery while slowing the virus. And perhaps the certified recovered, after working all day for the rest of us, could safely enjoy dancing the night away.

Aaron Edlin is a visiting scholar at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and professor of economics and law at UC Berkeley. Bryce Nesbitt is a co-founder of NextBus, a public transit information company.

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The 'certified recovered' from Covid-19 could lead the economic recovery - STAT

President Trump said last week that he hadnt heard about testing in weeks. But right now lets face it tests are being rationed in many parts of the country.

Of course, the seriously ill and essential front-line personnel like doctors, nurses and policemen require and deserve to go to the front of the line for testing.

But there are hundreds of thousands more people who should have been tested at this point, if more tests were available. Testing them would have vastly changed their behavior, their self-care at home, and (perhaps most important) our understanding of Covid-19, so that when it flares locally we would know how to respond in a more nuanced way, rather than shutting society down.

As of this writing I know nearly a dozen people who are presumed Covid. None of them were tested, because they were not sick enough to be admitted to a hospital though all were quite symptomatic. Heres a partial list:

Three 20-something roommates in Brooklyn, two with mild symptoms. One sick enough to visit a hospital, short of breath. No tests. All were told, Assume you have it.

Also presumed Covid: a colleagues daughter and her boyfriend, though he had a rough two-week course, including pneumonia. His oxygen levels, measured at home, never got quite bad enough for admission (and hence, no testing).

And finally, a reporter in San Francisco, who went to a clinic with high fever, total body aches and cough, is now presumed Covid. She was sent home. The next day her strep test came back positive. Assume you have Covid, too, she was told.

It is true that a positive Covid test would not have changed any of their immediate medical treatment. They got inhalers and the medicines they needed. Not knowing probably didnt increase their risk of death. So I dont fault the doctors for not administering them tests at a time of limited resources.

But here is what is outrageous: This resource should not be in such limited supply three months into a global outbreak. Widespread testing has hugely important impact, not just for individuals, but also for society.

For example, If people knew theyd had Covid, and therefore possessed at least some immunity, they could volunteer, once fully recovered, for groups like Meals on Wheels, which is struggling to deliver food to people who cant even in the best of times fend for themselves. They could serve as helpers in nursing homes, whose staffs are stretched thin and where the elderly are living in isolation.

Knowing the result of a test allows rational individual decisions. If a person living in a house with others knows whether he has Covid versus a common cold (and remember, the symptoms of Covid-19 may be very mild in younger people), it greatly affects how he interacts with family and housemates.

If he is Covid positive, it makes sense for him to totally isolate in one room and use a separate bathroom. An elderly relative might be moved out. If he has a common cold, less disruptive precautions are needed.

In this season of allergies sneezes and sniffles and when the country is trying to control the spread of a virus that can produce only mild symptoms in many of those infected, it would be good to be able to test as many essential workers broadly defined as possible to see if they had Covid-19.

This is not just a reference to health care workers, police and firefighters or utility workers. It is also not helpful for a food delivery person or the guy at the grocery counter, for example, to work with it, given how many people are depending on their services.

We test for things like strep and sexually transmitted diseases not just because knowing test results influences treatment should antibiotics be prescribed? but also because the results influence the care and advice for patients activities and contacts.

Finally, and perhaps most important, widespread testing of all those presumed Covid patients who are not hospitalized gives us a far clearer picture of this new viral disease, which we currently have so little data about.

It would allow us to calculate how many people who are infected with the virus get really ill and how many die (the true case fatality rate). We are now more or less clueless about those things, and because of uneven testing, fatality rates vary widely from city to city, state to state and country to country.

Finally, widespread testing would allow us to have a better sense of how transmissible the virus is after more casual contact. We know that the intense exposure of health care personnel in a hospital setting often leads to transmission. But what about the co-worker who sat across the office from you and rarely interacted with you?

Long after his graduate school classes were canceled, my son was belatedly notified that one person in his German class had fallen ill with Covid-19. How many others did, but were never tested?

After this period of lockdown, Covid-19 is likely to come back in lesser waves, and robust testing data would be hugely important in fashioning a targeted response that could be less expansive than the miserable and economically devastating shutdown we are now experiencing. If one student falls ill in a class, should universities once again send all students home and cancel a semester or just close a building? Or even just cancel one class?

Thank goodness that countries like South Korea are doing far more testing that we are, which might give us clues how to respond. But we should be doing much more ourselves.

There have been countless explanations for the lack of tests. Our public health labs are not primed to do testing and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was slow to react to a virus many knew was likely to come our way. The agency initially distributed test kits like Senate seats equally to each state lab, rather than where they were most needed. Then the first test kits didnt work.

The list goes on. The Food and Drug Administration only belatedly allowed private and university labs to contribute without the normal regulatory tape. There was a shortage of swabs and a shortage of personal protective equipment for people taking the swabs. Most recently, an Abbott quick test device that Mr. Trump had applauded as a solution a whole new ballgame turned out to be only 5,500 tests, distributed nationally. Yet many millions are needed.

All are plausible explanations and many are true. But no one should be satisfied with them in this, the richest country in the world.

There are concerns, to be sure, about the accuracy of the new tests, with reports of false negatives. But that is no reason not to use what we have; the specificity of newly developed tests can improve with understanding and use. It would be wise for people who test negative to continue rigorously following good Covid hygiene. But it would be a mistake to not expand testing aggressively simply because of reports of false negatives.

Presumed positive may be needed during a period of rationing and shortage. But Assume youre positive as so many New Yorkers are doing is not good individual health care or good policy.

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The Real Tragedy of Not Having Enough Covid-19 Tests - The New York Times