The New York Case Spike

was in July. Cases were also on the rise in South Dakota and Wisconsin. In North Dakota, the seven day average of new cases climbed to a new record, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News. Deaths are climbing too, but they typically appear in the data weeks after cases. A potentially game changing COVID test has been cleared for use in some European countries. The test, made by US company Beckton Dickinson, returns results in just

fifteen minutes. It's part of a new class of quicker screening tools that detect proteins called antigens they detect on the surface of stars. Covey too. Beckton Dickinson expects to begin selling the test, which runs on the company's cell phone sized bt Veritor Plus system, in European markets by the end of October. It will likely be used by

emergency departments, general practitioners, and pediatricians. Finally, a sobering new report shows that one in every one thousand children in New York State lost a parent to COVID nineteen between March and July. That's according to an analysis by United Hospital Fund and Boston Consulting Group. The report shows as many as three hundred and twenty five thousand children were pushed into or near poverty by the pandemic related economic downturn.

That brings us to today's main story. New York and in particular, New York City was hit hardest in the early months of the pandemic in the US, but after a strict lockdown, the city has enjoyed months of the lowest case rates in the country. Now, though, the city is starting to see a turn that it has long feared. As schools reopened and the weather gets cooler, cases have

begun to rise. Its rate of positive cases exceeded three for the first time in months, and the mayor is considering shutting select schools and businesses in the zip codes driving the increase. Senior Editor for Health Drew Armstrong has been tracking New York City's efforts to recover from the outbreaks devastating toll and to safely repair its wounded economy.

I spoke to Drew earlier today. After several months of declining case rates, New York and New York City in particular is starting to see a spike in COVID nineteen cases. What's going on here? I think what we're beginning to see right now with the increase in cases is in some ways really really unsurprising. If you think about how viruses infect people, they need interactions between sick people and

healthy people. And the more interactions of people that you have, the more chances you have for a virus to transmit. And what's been going on in New York is that we're seeing children go back to school, um restaurants are opening back up, people are going back into their offices, and every single one of those things essentially represents a new opportunity for the virus. And so if you talk

to epidemiologists and people who study infectious disease. Then you know they would tell you that this isn't shocking at all. It's in fact exactly what you would expect to see happen. You know, the more you open up, the more cases you're going to get. The big question is what happens

now next? And are the public health measures that are in place social distancing, masking, limited capacity in all of these places, are they enough to keep this tamped down at a elevated but under control number of cases, or are we at the start of a new surge. So I was wondering if we might drill down in terms of where we're seeing this this new spike in cases, what are the communities or what are the geographies that

we're really seeing these new cases emerging. Well, right now, we're seeing these cases emerge in a handful of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and we've seen the city push back and say we're going to go in and try and push very hard on better public health practices in some of those places. And I think what's important to remember here is that you know, again, think about the virus not as a countrywide phenomenon or a statewide phenomenon or a

citywide phenomenon. This is really something that spreads in communities, and so you have to think about infections as happening in communities, and communities can be everything from you know, somebody's workplace to the church they go to, to the restaurant they eat, to their group of friends. All of these outbreaks tend to start locally and then spread, and every single thing that we've seen um with this virus

has has been that way. It is. This is a human to human virus, which is why you know when public health workers are doing contact tracing, they're looking for the people you've been in touch with. And that's exactly how these types of diseases work. They are hyper hyper hyperlocal, and that's how they begin in outbreaks before then becoming

more widespread potentially. Do you think then this actually makes it a much more difficult job for saying, un disciple or local or even state government to really impose effective um SAVE restrictions are effective new guidelines because things are so hyper local. As you were saying, well, I think what you see is that there is a effort to try and get the communities where these are happening to really up their public health protections and that can have

a real effect from everything that we know. Um, the

other question is does it escape those communities? You know, if you have a group of people who aren't necessarily complying with some of the public health guidelines like masking and social distancing, can the virus then escape from one of those outbreaks into a wider population that is complying Or are are the the public health efforts like a mask like social distancing, Are they sufficient to keep the virus from developing into a wider outbreak because it's not

as easily able to gain hold in the broader population going into perhaps one specific type of community duty. You know, it's it's hard to escape the fact that we're here at the end of September, and this was the month that a lot of New York schools started to reopen. So what do you think this this means for schools who perhaps have just reopened with this new spike in cases? I mean, I can I can tell you from a

bit of personal experience. I live north of New York City and a colleague, UM just got noticed that the middle school here is going to remote learning. After a couple of cases. UM. I think one of the things that you will almost certainly see happen is this kind of on again, off again um practice with school where even with the restrictions and schools have put in place to limit some of the numbers of students that are in place, you're going to see, you know, cases pop up.

Schools temporarily go to remote learning fully while it gets resolved, students are back for a while, then they go back to a remote learning because more cases pop up. If you have virus circulating in the community and you have schools, they're open and then with a trigger to close if they get things. You know, it makes a lot of sense that you would see this kind of on off switch happening over and over again. That's probably really frustrating

to parents. UM. And I think we'll need to see how effective it is in terms of controlling potential outbreaks. And let's focus on the economic impact. What does this mean for the businesses or restaurants that have survived until now but are looking ahead and don't really see an end to this virus and potentially virus related restrictions. I think that's always been the concern, you know, that we would see a rising cases that are that that is large enough for there to be more locked on to.

Other countries have done this. I mean, the UK's in the middle of it right now, Israel has and so just because you've opened back up doesn't necessarily mean that you are able to stay open if things get really really bad. Comply into with a lot of these public health measures seems to be very good. UM. I've had conversations with people who are working on the city's outbreak UM, both inside the city government UM and outside consultants to it, who think that the city has been, you know, as

thoughtful as they possibly can be. You're also seeing an effort to balance the fact that you know, people do eventually tire of the kind of strictest levels of compliance with everything shut down UM, and also the fact that you know there are businesses and livelihoods UM at stake here UM that are that are in play, and you know, public health officials working with the city and working with health experts trying to figure out where how far can we open and what is the right and safe way

to open in order to keep this disease under control. I think, you know, until we have a vaccine or UM, some level of population wide immunity. This doesn't disappear, UM, it doesn't go away, and so you're always dealing with some baseline level of cases. The question is does it become bigger than that? And does it does it emerge into a full blown out of control outbreak like we

had earlier this spring? And so looking forward, you know, we're looking ahead to the rest of the fall and into even I mean, what do you think we are going to be seeing over the next few months, particularly with the rise of say flu season. Are we probably looking at more restrictions, more lockdowns? Um? I mean, what do you think the response is going to be if this case increase continues, It seems likely that we end up back in some level of increased restriction or at

least increased concern UM. If this outbreak does get it does it if it does evolve into something much larger through the summer. One of the things that's been true is that people have been able to spend a lot of time outside where it's easier to social distance UM, where it seems like you're less likely to be posed to virus um in in large quantities. And the weather is going to get colder and people are going to be moving back inside. That's gonna make things more challenging

and probably increased the level of transmission. That's That's what just about everybody who works in this space that that I have spoken to says, UM. What follows that is going to be UM, I mean, hopefully a effective and safe vaccine at some point sooner rather than later, but also inevitably the types of increased public health measures like lockdown, social distancing capacity limitations. UM, those things have followed just about everywhere else and it makes a lot of sense

that they would follow in New York as well. That Withdrew Armstrong, and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com, slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Top for Foreheads Jordan Gaspure, Magnus Henrickson,

and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Drew Armstrong. Original music by Leo Sidran Our Editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.