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Patchwork approach to contact tracing hampers national recovery

A patchwork approach to contact tracing across state health departments is making it increasingly difficult to know where people are getting exposed to COVID-19.

While some states like Louisiana and Washington state publicly track detailed data related to COVID-19 cases in bars, camps, daycares, churches, worksites and restaurants, most states do not, creating obstacles to preventing future cases.

The extensive spread of the virus, combined with the country's 50-state approach to pandemic response, has led to a dearth of information about where transmissions are occurring. Those shortcomings are in turn complicating efforts to safely open the economy and to understand the risks associated with certain activities and settings.

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NURSING HOME: Experimental drug used to stop COVID-19 spread

The coronavirus crept into Heartland Health Care Center, a nursing home in Moline, Ill., on the last day of July, when a member of the nursing staff tested positive.

It was an ominous sign: The virus can spread through a nursing home in a flash. Older people — who are often sick and frail and need regular hands-on attention — are uniquely susceptible. Staff members who care for residents are at high risk of infection and of unintentionally spreading the virus.

Although nursing home residents make up just 1.2 percent of the United States population, they account for about 40 percent of Covid-19 deaths.

But this time, the nursing home was not defenseless. Heartland was the first facility to participate in a large clinical trial of a drug that might protect residents from the infection in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

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C.D.C. says the number of people infected ‘far exceeds the number of reported cases’ in parts of the U.S.

 The number of people infected with the coronavirus in different parts of the United States was anywhere from two to 13 times higher than the reported rates for those regions, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings suggest that large numbers of people who did not have symptoms or did not seek medical care may have kept the virus circulating in their communities. The study is the largest of its kind to date, although some early data was released last month.

“These data continue to show that the number of people who have been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 far exceeds the number of reported cases,” Dr. Fiona Havers, the C.D.C. researcher who led the study, said in an email. “Many of these people likely had no symptoms or mild illness and may have had no idea that they were infected.”

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