As many prepare to return home for Thanksgiving, COVID-19 control sites across the country report long queues and waiting hours, but negative control is a safe way to ensure a virus-free Thanksgiving.
Health experts warn that negative control can cause more harm than smart when other people start relying on it as a guarantee to involve virus levels.
“There is a false sense of security because what the check tells you at this point is that when you took it, it was negative COVID or COVID positive,” Neysa Ernst, nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s biological containment unit. Newsweek said. ” It’s like I’ve been vaccinated against the flu, now I’m going to have the flu anymore. “
Dr. Roy Gulick, head of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, agreed that coronavirus tests may mislead others into thinking it’s to reunite with their families next weekend.
“As we’ve noticed at some rallies in the White House and elsewhere, a negative check can give a false sense of security,” he told Newsweek. “The only thing the checks tell you is that you had the virus at the time they were checked. “
“Getting a negative check actually reduces, but does not eliminate, the threat that SARS-CoV-2 will bring,” Gulick said.
For those who make plans to be monitored on Tuesday or Wednesday before returning home for a shared turkey dinner, virus grades may not be high enough to appear on the check either if exposure to coronavirus is recent.
In fact, COVID-19 tests can only check for one infection if the individual has been isolated for 14 days.
“If you need to be absolutely sure that you haven’t contracted the infection and can’t pass it on to someone else, it’s going to have to be 14 days,” Gulick said.
Travelling will be a challenge for Thanksgiving celebrations. For travelers who check for negative COVID-19, stealing or driving can re-expose others to the virus and take them with them to their destination.
Ernst said that even short trips, such as buying cranberry sauce and stuffing, can lead to new exposure.
“There is so much scattered network at this point. The numbers are so high that it can be examined at 10am, go to the grocery store at 10:30 a. m. , contact an inflamed user and at 11:00 a. m. : At 30 a. m. , you’d be COVID positive,” Ernst said.
When it comes to preventing the spread of coronavirus, Gulick said the tests were not the answer. Instead, he said the most productive bet to secure a Thanksgiving is to avoid having meetings all together.
“Thanksgiving is traditionally a time to be in combination with friends and family, but this is not the year to do it. This can be just a stage for super-recreational occasions across the country if other people don’t pay attention and do not follow precautions,” he told me.
Several cities and states have issued warnings before the long weekend, advising citizens to cancel their Thanksgiving plans this year.
On Wednesday, Harris County, the largest in Texas, issued an emergency alert asking citizens to cancel, and the county recorded a 250% increase in the cases shown. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington issued notices before the holiday weekend.
While some might think that everyone attending a Thanksgiving rally would be negative, Ernst suggested others reconsider.
“This ‘as long as everyone gets tested, it’s safe’ mentality is also a false sense of security,” he said. “There is an asymptomatic spread. People don’t even want to know he’s got the virus. temperature that morning, they’re fine, they go to the Thanksgiving rally and someone else is infected. “
“We all know the places where other people buy COVID, food in internal restaurants is the biggest risk, so you can extrapolate it to a giant indoor gathering for Thanksgiving dinner,” Gulick said. “This raises considerations about what we do regularly.
Ernst also noted that physical care systems have already overcome a wave of coronavirus hospitalizations.
“The Midwest wasn’t relatively affected on the first wave, but every day I get tweets from Midwest hospitals that say, “We’re full. We don’t have a broad attention span,” he said. We want to replace our must have some hope that this will not become a more furious forest chimney than it already is. “
Ernst fears that these hospitals will suffer even more and have an effect after Thanksgiving weekend, if others continue to meet.
“Hospitals will look like march or April when elective procedures are canceled,” he said.
“There is no unlimited group of health care staff. There is no unlimited group of hospital beds,” he added. “If health care staff are starting to have COVID, then you may not have a health care provider who cares for that patient and it’s going to get worse. “
Gulick hopes it’s possibly the only Thanksgiving in which families and friends have to cancel rallies to prevent them from an epidemic.
“This would possibly be the only Thanksgiving we want to greatly replace what we do,” he said. “If the vaccine is implemented at the end of this month or in December and next year, then I hope the pandemic can go away. and that the next Thanksgiving will be another story. “
“Let us be careful and respectful of our families. We all have a circle of family members who are at increased risk of severe COVID, either because of their age or because of underlying diseases. This is not a year you have to transmit the virus to that circle of family members. People take each and every precaution this year not to do that,” he added.
Update 18/11/20 17:32 This story has been updated to include more information on Roy Gulick’s membership.
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