Public health officials warn senators of 'inevitable' spread of coronavirus in US

WASHINGTON - Trump administration health officials warned the public on Tuesday of the "inevitable" spread of the coronavirus within the U.S., escalating warnings about the threat the virus poses.

The warning by officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies markedly changed the tone about risks from the virus, a day after stock markets tanked around the world over concerns about the virus and with cases multiplying globally. The warning came Tuesday, both at a closed-door meeting with senators as well as a separate briefing with reporters by phone.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said officials warned of a "very strong chance of an extremely serious outbreak of the coronavirus here in the United States."

Separately, on a conference call with reporters, public health officials repeated dire warnings.

"Ultimately we expect we will see community spread in the United States. It's not a question of if this will happen, but when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses," said Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Messonnier said the rapid surge in cases in new locations outside mainland China in the past several days prompted the urgency in new official warnings. She noted the spread of new cases without a known source of exposure in Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. Evidence of so-called "community spread," she said, is triggering new strategies to blunt impact of illness and slow the spread of the respiratory virus.

The CDC said the agency would be shifting strategies and using a dual approach. Health officials still plan to try to contain the spread and slow down the spread of the virus into the United States. At the same time, health officials are now urging businesses, schools and health-care facilities to plan for ways to limit the impact of illness when it spreads in the community.

At the hearing of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, some senators said they didn't sense health officials were sounding such an alarmist tone. However, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said senators were told that the number of cases in the U.S. would inevitably grow. There are now more than 50 people with the virus in the U.S., all but 14 of them evacuees from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

"What we heard was that it's inevitable that we'll have more than 14 cases as time goes on," Alexander said. "And what we'll have to try to do is the same thing we've already done through quarantining and monitoring through our public health system to limit that as much as possible."

Sen. John Neely Kennedy, R-La., criticized the lawmaker briefing, because while issuing dire warnings, officials couldn't answer his basic questions.

"I thought a lot of the briefing was bull----," Kennedy said. "They would answer the question but dodge, bob and weave. I understand there's a lot they don't know. I get that. But they need to answer the questions straight up. They all talk about a task force, a committee - a committee's not going to solve this problem."

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar defended the administration's new $1.8 billion emergency spending request for the virus, which includes $1.25 billion in new money and transfers other funds from ebola research. The total amount the administration proposes to spend to combat the virus is at least $2.5 billion, according to the request released late Monday.

Democrats slammed the request as woefully inadequate as they excoriated the administration for cutting public health budgets for years. Even some Republicans questioned whether it was enough.

"I think the American people are very concerned and should be. I'm concerned," said Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala. "it could be an existential threat to a lot of people in this country. This is not politics this is doing our job for the American people."

Shelby went on to tell Azar: "If you lowball something like this you'll pay for it later. You're not only dealing with the crisis, you're dealing with the perception of the American people."

Azar pushed back against senators' complaints. He pointed to the use of the first federal quarantine authority in more than 50 years to contain the disease and efforts to restrict travel from China. He said the administration's supplemental request focused on "five key critical success factors": expanding surveillance for coronavirus in the United States, support for state and local governments, supporting research and development of vaccines and therapeutics, and acquiring additional personal protective equipment such as masks and ventilators.

"The steps the president has taken are the most aggressive containment measures ever taken," Azar said in response to senators' questions about the supplemental and whether the administration was adequately preparing. "Our country is preparing every day."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also pressed Azar on administration efforts to test people for the coronavirus, asking whether a faulty CDC test has limited the ability to screen potential carriers. Azar denied that the CDC test did not work, but only a handful of state laboratories can currently run tests outside of the CDC in Atlanta because the CDC sent kits that included a faulty component a week and a half ago. Azar told senators that the administration hoped to expand the U.S. surveillance system for coronavirus to be comparable to flu surveillance.