The City Health Department has missed the early detection of COVVI -19 because it listened to the CDC bureaucrats – losing the chance to potentially spare unwanted death figures, said a former agency director.
The leaders of the ministry decided to strictly respect the COVVI-19 tests of the COVIR-19 Centers for Disease for Disease and the prevention of Federal Centers for Disease and Prevention, which has delayed the confirmation of the presence and transmission of the virus in the Big Apple of more than a month, confirming the presence and transmission of the virus in the Big Apple over a month, Writing Don Weiss In his new book, “Disease holdings: real stories of New York epidemics.”
Weiss, a former “supervisory director” of the Big Apple Ministry of Health, was monitoring the situation of the trenches at the time.
He said he was frustrated by CDC guidelines that limit tests to suspected infected patients who returned to the United States of Wuhan, China and elsewhere abroad, presented a lower lower respiratory disease or were exposed to a known case.
Many New Yorkers presented only light and pseudo-grapple symptoms of COVID and would not be tested according to CDC’s criteria.
This meant that they did not potentially know that they had it – and above all, could infect other people in poor health, immunocompromised or with serious pre -existing conditions or a disease.
In a vaccine without time, COVID turned into a death sentence for many elderly people and other people with serious illness.
“I feared that we are missing the opportunity to prevent an assault,” said Weiss in the book of limited tests.
“By following the strict CDC criteria for tests, we lacked cases. … The overwhelming probability has favored light cases in New York, but our hands have felt linked. »»
He said that he and a few others who had followed the disease wanted to test the residents suspected of having even light cases of COVID-19 to start a public health campaign earlier.
“But we were elected and we held the CDC criteria. … We had to leave the CDC script, “wrote Weiss, 67, who directed the city surveillance unit for 22 years.
“It was a horrible place, stuck between the suspicions of cases and the inability to test them,” he said. “It was four weeks in the pandemic, and we still hadn’t identified COVVI-19 cases in New York, and e-mail with my colleagues imploring that we were viring to the rigidity of CDC received no response.”
He noted that Sharon Balter, a former employee of the department now working in the health service of Los Angeles, sent specimens to the CDC who did not meet the test criteria because the Big Apple agency was still “stubbornly” trying to retaliate.
The CDC had strict criteria for tests in part due to the limited capacity to test, said Weiss.
On January 29, 2020, a Brooklyn hospital reported a patient who was a carpooling driver at the end of the forties who was very sick and on a fan. The flu and RSV tests were negative, but it was not tested for Covid.
“Although the patient himself did not trace, he had an exhibition to travelers. … I was elected and the patient was not tested, well, not several months later, “said Weiss.
It turned out that the driver of carpooling had a core. He had underlying affections and died of the problems related to the covid in May 2021.
Nearly 240 suspect cases of COVID-19 were reported to the city’s health service before confirmation of the first file coche on March 1, 2020.
“Covid-19 was clearly traveling in New York a month before the first recognized positive case,” wrote Weiss.
“The delay in testing capacity has led to delayed recognition of the circular virus, which altered the response in public health until community transmission has been established.”
Weiss, in a later interview with The Post on his book, said: “There is a possibility that we would have saved lives” if a cocovated transmission had been detected earlier.
At the very least, residents could have been warned to quarantined and wear masks to protect themselves and protect themselves, he said.
Neither the CDC nor the New York Health Department responded to requests for comments from the position.
Weiss book too:
- Criticized the management by Bill de Blasio of the pandemic by Bill de Blasio.
Weiss was rabid when De Blasio mentioned a bronx child who was tested positive for COVID -19 – revolutionizing enough information for the child to be identified.
“The child has become the target of abuses on the part of classmates and the community. … We were outraged and have sworn not to share more information that could repeat the cruelty we have witnessed, “wrote Weiss.
He told the post that the staff of City Health Department had donated money to the student.
“Contact tracing in New York was ineffective to slow down the transmission of COVID-19. Whoever claims differently puts lipstick on a pig, “said Weiss.
He said that students’ projection at school for COVID-19 was also overused.
It is just to argue that it was appropriate to try different strategies to help tame a single pandemic, said Weiss.
“But the tenacity with which the city has remained with ineffective strategies cannot be justified,” he said. “We have to go to a more tolerable balance of individual freedom and the protection of communities.”
The data show that 46,879 deaths in the city have been associated with COVID-19 and its variants from the original epidemic. There have been around 3.7 million cases in total cocoat and 241,203 hospitalizations in the Big Apple.
Weiss retired in 2023 after being reassigned, he said that he called the politically correct.