The Italians suggest that the US reserve their limited tests for the community, to avoid further spreading of the various, and to assume that the highly symptomatic patients in hospitals are infected. Instead, the US seems to be doing the opposite, focusing on prioritizing and limiting testing to already admitted inpatients in the hospital...Another US strategic mistake to pile up?
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"Another needed move from patient- to community-centered care: Assume everyone who develops a fever and other symptoms has the coronavirus, Cereda said. (A positive identification usually isn’t necessary and doesn’t change treatment, since there is no known Covid-19-specific therapy yet.) Then, at least until the U.S. has adequate testing capacity, reserve those tests for nursing homes, schools, and other possible hot spots in the community in order to identify people who are infected with virus but who do not have symptoms.
“Don’t let them spread it,” Cereda said. “If we had done this in January, the U.S. wouldn’t be in this situation,” with an exploding number of cases (poised to blow past 20,000 on Saturday) and overwhelmed hospitals.
Health officials in some hard-hit areas in the U.S., including in California and Washington, are already moving to
reserve testing for high-risk populations, including health workers, the Washington Post reported."
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/21/...ients-at-home/