Health Officials Warn Americans Not To Let Their Guard Down

With a COVID-19 vaccine perhaps just days away in the U.S., most of California headed into another lockdown Sunday because of the surging outbreak and top health officials warned Americans that this is no time to let their guard down.

"The vaccine's critical," Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "But it's not going to save us from this current surge. Only we can save us from this current surge."

A Food and Drug Admin-istration advisory panel is scheduled to take up a request Thursday to authorize emergency use of Pfizer's vaccine. Vaccinations could begin just days later, though initial supplies will be rationed, and shots are not expected to become widely available until the spring.

With the U.S. facing what could be a catastrophic winter, top government officials warned Americans anew to wear masks, practice social distancing and follow other basic measures - precautions that President Donald Trump and other members of the administration have often disdained.

"I hear community members parroting back those situations - parroting back that masks don't work, parroting back that we should work towards herd immunity, parroting back that gatherings don't result in super-spreading events," Birx said. "And I think our job is to constantly say those are myths, they are wrong and you can see the evidence base."

NEW YORK

Will the US ever have a national COVID-19 testing strategy?

As the coronavirus epidemic worsens, U.S. health experts hope Joe Biden's administration will put in place something Donald Trump's has not - a comprehensive national testing strategy.

Such a strategy, they say, could systematically check more people for infections and spot surges before they take off. The health experts say it would be an improvement from the current practice, which has professional athletes and students at elite universities getting routine tests while many other Americans stand in line for hours - if they get tested at all.

"We have had no strategy for this virus. Our strategy has been no strategy," said Dr. Michael Mina, a Harvard University researcher focused on use of testing to track disease.

Some experts say the lack of such a system is one reason for the current national explosion in cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

"If we'd had a more robust approach and testing was scaled up as one of the tools, I think much of this third surge would would have been avoidable," said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

The Associated Press