Complete Story
 

09/28/2020

How the National HIV Strategy Help Guide the COVID Fight

An old plan is better than this administration's lack of a plan

We are now 6 months or 9 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, depending on whether you count from the recognition of the first cases in China in January or the decision to begin locking down the United States in March. More than 200,000 Americans have died—nearly 25 percent of the deaths worldwide—and almost 7 million others have either tested positive or fallen ill and recovered.

In that time, parts of the U.S. health establishment have published guidelines for how to prevent the disease and treat it, along with some documents—though not many—about how the White House has been tracking the illness. But one thing is still missing from the US coronavirus response: a comprehensive national strategy for how to combat COVID-19.

This is unusual. In the past, the US government has produced thorough plans for handling epidemics, both for outbreaks we were already in the middle of and for ones we could envision arriving, such as pandemic flu. Now a group of HIV researchers, impatient with the delay, has proposed taking one of those plans, the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, as the basis of a comprehensive COVID-19 response, one that would define what it means to beat back this disease, and set out the steps to get there.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.

Printer-Friendly Version