New Tools Likely As CT Heads Into Fall/Winter Coronavirus Battle

CONNECTICUT — Connecticut and the rest of the country will likely have a few more tools in the tool chest this fall and winter if there is a resurgence of the coronavirus.

“I’m cautiously optimistic and actually quite optimistic about how the future is going to play out,” said Dr. Albert Ko, department chair at the Yale School of Medicine and member of the state’s reopening advisory council. Ko appeared on the state’s coronavirus news briefing Tuesday.

Ko warned that Connecticut residents will have to be vigilant even before the start of the traditional cold season as some countries around the world are seeing a resurgence of the coronavirus even during warm weather.

It is unknown how a resurgence in Connecticut would play out and whether it would be all at once or be small pockets that could be contained, Ko said. Connecticut has a system in place between testing and track and trace to quickly handle any pockets of resurgence.

New tools

Yale School of Public Health researchers designed a saliva-based coronavirus test that was granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. The test is simpler to perform and less expensive that nasal swab testing.

The FDA also granted emergency use authorization for Abbott’s BinaxNow rapid coronavirus test, which costs $5. The simple test kit can be run without a laboratory. Abbott plans to manufacture 50 million tests per month by October.

Decentralizing testing will help get more infected people to stay home before they spread the virus, Ko said.

Doctors now know how to better treat people who are moderately or severely ill with COVID-19, Ko said. Corticosteroids help bring down inflammation in the body and give patients a better chance of surviving the virus.

There are also large-scale phase 3 trials for the use of monoclonal antibodies. The synthetic antibodies potentially could be used to prevent people from being infected with the coronavirus.

The monoclonal antibodies would likely be highly beneficial in high-risk settings like nursing homes if they are proven to be effective, Ko said.

Vaccine

The likelihood of a vaccine result by October is low, Ko said. Large-scale phase 3 trials recently started and many of the vaccine candidates require two doses spread one month apart. In addition, trial participants will have to experience enough “infection events” where they naturally come into contact with someone infected with the virus in order to determine if it is effective. The results likely won’t be known until at least November and possibly as late as January.

Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser of the federal Operation Warp Speed vaccine program said during an NPR interview that the likelihood of getting results by October would be very low. He was confident around 20 to 25 million vaccines would be available before the end of the year for high-risk people. The Operation Warp Speed program is aiming for enough vaccine to inoculate the U.S. population by the middle of 2021.

There is also the issue of vaccine safety where the country will want to avoid a repeat of the 1976 swine flu vaccine that caused rare severe side effects in some people. The vaccine was rushed to market in an effort to contain a flu strain. The s1976 swine flu vaccine set the country back in terms of vaccine acceptance and public confidence.

“That’s the last thing we want you know with the Covid vaccine,” he said.