CDC Issues New Guidelines On Isolating If You Test Positive
BLITZER: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offering new guidance on people who have tested positive for coronavirus, whether they have symptoms or asymptomatic. Let's get details and analysis with Emergency Room Physician, Dr. Megan Ranney and Epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Dr. El-Sayed, let's start with people who are symptomatic. The CDC now saying they may quit isolating ten days after symptoms first appeared as long as 24 hours have passed since last having a fever, without use of any fever meds, or if a fever has passed without use of meds, and two tests taken more than 24 hours apart come back negative. How significant potentially is this change? What's the bottom line?</s>DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, the bottom line is that if you have symptoms, stay away from folks. And we're starting to get a better picture of just how long people may be shedding virus after their symptoms are subsiding. And what the CDC is giving us is a better sense of the calipers around when that period is. But, you know, the same points that the public should understand remain clear. Number one, everybody ought to be masking and staying socially distant because you may not know that you're spreading it even before you have symptoms or without symptoms. But if you do have symptoms, after those symptoms subside, we have a better sense of when, then you can assume that you're not shedding virus. And this is really what the CDC is explaining to the public now.</s>BLITZER: Because people who are totally asymptomatic may not even know they have coronavirus. They can easily spread it to their parents, their grand grandparents, or strangers on the street for that matter if folks don't wear masks. Dr. Ranney, the CDC also updated some guidelines for asymptomatic people who've tested positive. It's recommended that they also wait 10 days after the first positive test if they haven't developed symptoms or if two tests taken more than 24 hours apart come back negative. Do we have any indication at all of how many people might be asymptomatic, completely without symptoms, but still able to spread this potentially deadly disease?</s>DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, LIFESPAN/BROWN UNIVERSITY: So, Wolf, this is one of the big questions that we're exploring right now within public health and medicine. And just to break it down, what asymptomatic means is that you have no symptoms. No sore throat, no fever, no cough, no fatigue, nothing. There's also mildly symptomatic and pre-symptomatic, which means it's a day or two before you're going to develop symptoms. Depending on how it's measured, studies say anywhere from 15 pecent to 50 pecent of people who are infected may be asymptomatic. What that means for you and me is two things. First, as Dr. El-Sayed said, it is critically important for us to always behave as if anyone who were around could be infected and asymptomatic. That's why that mask wearing and physical distancing is critical, no matter how much you trust a person. The second place that it really matters is around testing, because if we're only testing symptomatic people, it means we're missing the folks who are super spreaders. There have been a bunch of reports in the news about those asymptomatic people sickening whole churches or choirs. And so, as we move forward in this pandemic, we have to start thinking about having enough tests to test for asymptomatic people who may be spreading the virus.</s>BLITZER: You know, Dr. El-Sayed, the guide relies on testing in some cases, yet unfortunately, it's still so hard for a lot of people to get tested and get results back in a timely fashion, within let's say two or three days. Some folks have to wait a week, ten days. How useful is that information and why are we still lagging so far behind a whole bunch of other countries in testing and reporting capabilities?</s>EL-SAYED: Well, I'll tell you, what this really shows is that, we could get such a better handle on this virus if we had the testing to be able to do that. And the fact of the matter is, is that we just not have had the federal leadership that we've needed to be able to clear the way to get all of the components of a test together at the scale that we need to be able to provide it to the general public. And this is frustrating because, of course, we've been dealing with this virus now in earnest since March. And frankly, we should have been dealing with it in earnest since January. So we got behind from the jump and haven't caught up. Meanwhile, you have very well meaning protocols coming out of public agencies. The problem, though, of course, as you've noted is that we just don't have the testing available to be able to activate those for enough of the people who may in fact be exposed and potentially ill. And just to put an exclamation point on Dr. Ranney's excellent point, we don't know if we are carriers of this disease. And so, it is absolutely critical not just to pay attention to what happens when you have symptoms but to assume that even if you don't have symptoms, you could be one of those people who spreading it.</s>BLITZER: Yes, that's really important as well. Dr. Ranney, what are we learning now, some new information about reinfection rates? Are people getting coronavirus more than once?</s>RANNEY: It is too early for us to see for sure whether people are being infected by coronavirus more than once. There are a few anecdotes or case studies of people who have been infected, gotten better and then been infected again. There are other studies showing that somewhere around two-thirds of people develop antibodies or immunity to COVID-19 and that about half of those, their immunity disappears within a couple of months. Those studies are concerning to us, but there's no definite evidence one way or another whether people can be re-infected at this point. It is simply too early in the course of this virus for us to know for sure. Time will tell, and we hope to goodness that people will not be able to be infected more than once, but we're waiting and seeing and watching.</s>BLITZER: Yes. The doctors, the medical experts, the scientists, they've learned a lot about this virus, but they all acknowledge there's still a whole lot more they still have to learn. To both of you, doctors, thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Ranney, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, appreciate it very, very much. Stay safe out there. Thanks for all the good work.</s>EL-SAYED: Thank you for having us.</s>BLITZER: A crisis unfolding in Portland, Oregon, right now. The city's attorney general is demanding an investigation after video surfaced online that showed masked and camouflaged federal agents detaining peaceful protesters, but are there legal issues for these kinds of arrests? We'll discuss that and have much more on the coronavirus when we come back.