Testimony

The epidemic spread of coronavirus in China — along with community transmission in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan — sharply increase the chance that we endure pandemic spread. Worse still, the novel coronavirus may become endemic. It could take a new position as a more sinister member of the seasonal pathogens that circulate each year and infect humans.

The next month is critical. We must prepare for the prospect that the virus evaded our border protections and was already introduced into the U.S. in late December or early January — when it first appears to have become epidemic in China’s Hubei province. Those index cases could have seeded community spread, and eventually, outbreaks could emerge in America. We have the capacity to contain small outbreaks. But we need to be vigilant and ready.

Models suggest that from the time of first introduction of the virus into China — which we now suspect occurred sometime in November — to the time of epidemic spread in China, was about 10 weeks.[i] The experience in the U.S. is likely to be different, not least because our awareness of this risk is prompting collective action that can limit spread. But China’s experience shows that if cases were imported into the U.S. in early January and remain undetected, then we could still be early in our own evolution toward broader outbreaks. Right now, we’re depending largely on clinical surveillance as our primary tool for identifying potential outbreaks since we’re just now deploying diagnostic tools to the Laboratory Response Network. Moreover, we still haven’t broadened our screening criteria to include patients who don’t have a connection to recent travel to China. This limits our ability to identify secondary spread. So, we may know we’re experiencing outbreaks of this disease only when a cluster of cases of atypical pneumonia present to a hospital and trigger closer scrutiny by health officials. By that time, there could be dozens or even hundreds of cases in a local community. Controlling broader spread could become a challenge.

Read the full testimony here.