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Editor's Note: Eric Garcetti, Democrat, is the Mayor of Los Angeles. David Holt, Republican, is the Mayor of Oklahoma City. Mark McClellan, MD, is the founding director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University and served as FDA Commissioner and Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The opinions expressed in this comment are their own. See more opinions at CNNE.com/opinion
(CNN Spanish) - Americans are hearing a lot from mayors and doctors right now, in the melting pot of a public health emergency like it has never been seen in the United States since the 1918 flu pandemic a century ago.
This partnership is developing in communities across the country: Doctors are treating patients affected by the increased covid-19 and giving advice on how to do better, and elected leaders are receiving that guide in hopes of saving more. lives.
Public health experts are coming together around the belief that a return to normal requires a robust system to screen patients, track contacts of those infected, and quarantine those who have the virus or have been directly exposed. Some of this is already being done, but not on the scale necessary to restore a version of our previous lives.
We know that some of the worst days of this crisis are yet to come, as cases and deaths continue to grow. But there are encouraging signs that swift action by local leaders, rooted in close collaboration with healthcare experts, is flattening the curve. The credit goes to the American people, who are embracing science, making the sacrifices, and now asking: what's next? How can we recover more of our lives and our economy, in a way that keeps us prepared and protects us against future waves of the coronavirus?
Congress is considering more legislation to help the country respond, with an appropriate approach to address the economic devastation and health care needs facing our communities right now. Local communities are also working to combat the economic effects of covid-19, such as in Oklahoma City, where its Small Business Continuity Program is awarding $ 5.5 million in grants and loans to small businesses.
But in addition to those steps, we need a stronger approach and a whole new infrastructure to face this moment and forge a stronger future.
To lead this mission, we propose the creation of a CARES Corps: a coalition of local governments and workers, city and county health agencies working with healthcare professionals and companies, all backed by leadership and federal funds, built to stop covid -19 and rebuild our economy. There are clear precedents for this bold approach: From the Cold War to the War on Poverty, our national leaders have enlisted us to unite causes greater than ourselves with initiatives like the Peace Corps and the Corps of Teachers.
A CARES Corps would leave the mark of our generation on history by helping to make our country safer and accelerate the economic recovery of America's main streets.
Whether we are talking about 1918 or 2020, we know that the return to good health and prosperity is paved with rapid action, deep collaboration, and methodical planning at a level that national governments can build and local officials can execute.
With history as our guide and the current crisis driving our action, Congress should focus the CARES Corps on three core elements: equipping public health professionals with the tools to support and expand a national testing system; address budget deficits in our cities so that we can avoid dramatic reductions in vital services; and uniting government officials with local workers and businesses around actions on unemployment insurance, job training and loan programs, so that each solution meets the needs of each community.
This approach would be a true stimulus package, stimulating the effective response to covid-19 and the long-term economic revitalization that our country desperately needs. And his work would be based on six pillars:
1. Evidence. We need to carry out rapid and generalized tests for all people with symptoms of covid-19, and tests for asymptomatic people in settings with significant risks of transmission. There must be strong national standards for test quality and reliability, and federal financial support and coverage requirements to ensure that supplies are affordable and widely available.
2. Real-time surveillance to detect and prevent new outbreaks. We need to link test results to a surveillance network, so that covid-19 can be tracked in real time, and we can quickly spot new hot spots, track the success of interventions, and keep Americans informed. Federal support through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should allow this to happen, with funds for state and local surveillance along with electronic data interchange.
3. Quick response to new cases. It is not enough to know where the new cases are. We need increased capacity to quickly isolate cases, track and communicate with contacts, and quarantine non-immune individuals who have been exposed to covid-19. This will require rapid training and the reuse of some workers in urgent new jobs.
4. Hospital capacity. Since the start of this outbreak, it has become clear that our nation is woefully short on hospital beds. Cities from Los Angeles and Seattle to New Orleans and New York City have found innovative ways to ease the burden on medical facilities, such as engaging local manufacturers to reuse their manufacturing facilities to manufacture PPE and facial coatings, reuse parks and convention centers like emergency facilities, and ask. The federal government will deploy hospital ships. But we shouldn't have to fight like this. We need a national push to increase capacity in intensive care units, emergency rooms and supplies to anywhere the next wave of the coronavirus can hit.
5. Blood tests. Blood tests for immunity can help identify Americans who could serve in workplaces, classrooms, and roles that might otherwise create a significant risk of transmission. The supply and quality of existing antibody tests are not good enough for this critical purpose. We need a better ability to accurately measure antibodies to the virus and understand how test results translate into real immunity. And we need production of these tests to accelerate across the country and distribution to be coordinated so that cities of all sizes can benefit.
6. Research and development in progress. Our country has repeatedly made groundbreaking discoveries by combining the knowledge of top scientists with the catalytic force of federally backed research and development. CDC and other agencies should support standardized data collection and work more closely with states, universities, and laboratories to learn more about treatments and how to use them in practice, and then help disseminate this information to medical professionals. The data should include reliable demographic, racial, ethnic, economic and other information that allows us to focus more effectively on outreach and resources for those who need it most.
There is real-time evidence that this approach can make an immediate difference: In Los Angeles, a city-county partnership is helping residents, community-based organizations, and businesses access critical resources that may be the difference between ruin and recovery.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed leads an aggressive response that deploys city employees alongside medical students to help quickly track and trace cases and contacts in that city.
This type of strategic approach must occur in cities and counties across the country.
Responding to any major emergency in the United States works best when we merge the scale of federal leadership with the expertise in public health and healthcare, and the reliable delivery of resources that defines the response of local governments to this outbreak. We have not yet done so, but the loss of life we have already experienced shows the urgency of timely and strategic federal action.
When our nation has faced sudden shocks in the past, be it the attack on Pearl Harbor or the terror of September 11, we have faced them by bringing to bear the full power of American ingenuity and the full force of our communities. in the lives of our people.
If our national leaders look at our local strategies, they will find models to do it again, examples of the significant reform and lasting recovery that Americans will expect once we are on the other side of this crisis.
Eric Garcetti
