Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-03-16)

◼ COVID-19 / GOVERNMENT Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 2020

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of Medicine paper. Snohomish County officials

allowed him to leave home isolation three weeks later.

● What slowed testing down?

Early in February the CDC began shipping test kits

to laboratories around the country as news out of

Wuhan grew alarming—tens of thousands more sick-

ened and a virtual lockdown imposed to keep people

in their homes. Outbreaks hit Iran, Italy, and South

Korea. More cases around the U.S. were reported,

suggesting other travelers may have brought the virus

home with them. For every dozen cases the U.S.

caught, it probably missed 20 or 25, estimates Marc

Lipsitch, an epidemiology professor at the Harvard

T.H.ChanSchoolofPublicHealth.“Itmaybe,for

Are American

workers ready?

Many working Americans lack health benefits,whilemoreworkersthaneverareinindustrieswhere they have to

show up to get paid, including heath care and restaurants.Olderworkers,whoareparticularlyvulnerable to Covid-19,

make up an increasing portion of the U.S. laborforce.Here’sa lookathowvariousriskfactorsvaryby income level and

industry. �Dorothy Gambrell

Construction

Wholesale

trade* Manufacturing

Transportation

Information and warehousing*

Financial

activities Professional and business services

◀ Highest weekly wages

What benefits do workersenjoyindifferentindustries?

Percentage of workers with Access to paid leave Health benefits Ability to work from home

example, that Seattle got unlucky and had an early

introduction that did take off into a chain of trans-

mission, and other places that did nothing differ-

ent might have had better luck,” he says. “It’s quite

possible that we’ll see some places with lots of cases

once we start testing.”

Testing around the U.S. was hampered when

local officials reported flaws in the kits the CDC sent.

Replacements didn’t come until weeks later, which

left most hospitals and clinics short of tests. Shifting

guidelines for who should get the few tests available

also confused hospitals, Diaz says. At the time, there

still had been only the single case reported in Seattle.

Trevor Bedford, a Harvard-trained researcher and

viral genome expert at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson

Cancer Research Center, wondered why. He had

Utilities*