Coronavirus Watch: Don't get an antibody test, experts say
Medical experts are advising Americans against getting coronavirus antibody tests – at least not until the questionable ones have been weeded out and scientists know whether people who have survived COVID-19 are immune from the virus.
Experts warn that the antibody tests, which haven't been validated by government regulators, may give people "a false sense of security." Read more here.
It's Thursday, and this is Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network.
Here's the latest news, as of 1:15 p.m. ET:
- More than 1.2 million people have tested positive for the virus in the U.S., and more than 73,000 have died. See a map of confirmed cases here.
- A top United Nations official warned of a looming COVID-19 crisis in poor countries that could "boomerang" back to rich nations unless they help contain it.
- A member of the military who works at the White House tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting new tests of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence that proved negative, administration officials said Thursday.
- A 17-page guide from the CDC to help local leaders decide when and how to reopen public places has been buried by the Trump administration, the Associated Press reports.
- An ICE detainee in Southern California died from the coronavirus, the first death reported in a U.S. immigration detention center.
- The meatpacking industry has more than 10,000 coronavirus cases, according to Paste BN and Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting tracking.
- Thousands of new ventilators, the life-saving machines in limited supply during the early stages of the pandemic in the U.S., are pouring into the federal government’s reserve.
- U.S. stocks opened higher Thursday despite the latest grim weekly employment figures.
- Almost 3.2 million Americans filed initial applications for unemployment insurance last week, the Labor Department reported today, down from the all-time high of 6.86 million applications filed in late March. The latest total means 33 million Americans have applied for unemployment in just seven weeks, a number that exceeds all the jobs created since the Great Recession by more than 12 million.
Some good news: People in Ireland are donating to Native Americans grappling with the coronavirus, saying they were inspired by a 173-year-old act of kindness: In 1847, members of the Choctaw Nation gave $170, which would be roughly $5,000 today, to the Irish during the famine.
Keep asking us your coronavirus questions through this form! Basil from Seneca, South Carolina, asks: Why does the United States have over a million more confirmed cases of the coronavirus than any other country?
The U.S. has a larger population than some of the other countries reporting high case rates, but even countries with larger populations, such as China and India, are reporting fewer cases than the U.S. is reporting.
That could be a result of increased testing and delayed control measures early on, said Dr. Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
"Although our testing efforts still are not up to what they need to be, we are running more tests in absolute numbers (not per populous) than probably any country in the world. So if the metric is simply absolute numbers, the more you test the more you see. But again, we also had very poor control efforts early on and the virus continues to transmit at very high levels," Mina said.
The U.S. has tested nearly 8 million people, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
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— Grace Hauck, Breaking News Reporter, @grace_hauck