While Donald Trump assured Wednesday that the United States is ready to face the Covid-19 epidemic, the management of the health crisis does not seem to be completely developed. The American health authorities have indeed waited several days before passing tests to a woman touched by the coronavirus in California because she had not been in direct contact with contaminated people, affirmed, Thursday, February 27, an American elected representative .
The announcement, made at a congressional hearing in Washington, suggests that similar cases of"Unknown exhibit" may have gone through virus detection operations while about 8,400 people are under surveillance in this western US state.
The patient was admitted to the UC Davis Hospital on February 19, where doctors immediately asked federal authorities to test her for the coronavirus, said Ami Bera, a doctor and Democrat elected to the House of Representatives, during this hearing. But it took three days after her condition got worse for her to "Pass the test after a lot of insistence" from the medical team, said Bera, who worked at UC Davis and was briefed by a former colleague.
The positive came three days later, prompting the Centers for Disease Detection and Prevention (CDC) to announce its first suspected case on Wednesday."Unknown exposure". It could be the first case of "Community contamination" in the territory, that is to say of a person who has neither traveled to the risk areas nor been in contact with another known patient. A new level in the spread of the epidemic.
200 screening kits for 40 million inhabitants
In addition, according to a whistleblower's complaint, relayed by the media on Thursday, health workers were sent without protective equipment to American returnees and placed in quarantine after being exposed to the new coronavirus. Accessed by Washington Post and the New york times, the complaint was filed by an official with the United States Department of Health claiming to have been shelved after voicing her concerns and threatened with dismissal if she did not move on.
This case is notably linked to the Travis military air base, in California, where the first case of "Community contamination" in the United States, explain the two American daily newspapers.
The whistleblower claims in her complaint that a large number of employees of the Ministry of Health were sent without protection or prior specific training to American nationals repatriated and placed in quarantine on two military bases in California at the late January and early February.
These teams have worked at certain times, she testifies, alongside agents of the American Centers for Detection and Prevention of Diseases, protected from head to toe. After their mission to California, some agents of the Ministry of Health returned home on commercial flights, the newspapers still report.
California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has deplored the fact that California and its 40 million people have only 200 screening kits. Sixty-one cases have been confirmed in the United States, including 46 people who have been infected abroad.
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