By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington today will focus on the effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, soon.
U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt chairs the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies holding the hearings with federal health officials. Blunt says though the number of cases is rising, that doesn’t necessarily mean deaths will spike.
“I think it’s unlikely that the death toll will have any commensurate comparison to the death toll earlier where people that were being tested were almost universally people that were already sick,” Blunt tells reporters on a conference call.
Blunt says testing has greatly increased, including testing at the workplace.
“We’ve seen that particularly in the close workplace situations that we have in the livestock and poultry processing facilities in our state and other places,” according to Blunt.
Locally, Mosaic Life Care had tested 11,801 area residents as of Wednesday morning. Of those, 530 tested positive for COVID-19. Eighteen COVID-19 patients are hospitalized at the St. Joseph hospital.
The Missouri Department of Health reports nearly 400,000 Missourians have been tested with nearly 22,000 testing positive for the coronavirus, resulting in slightly more than 1,000 deaths.
Though COVID-19 restrictions have eased, the coronavirus remains a threat which Blunt says must be taken seriously.
“Wearing that mask, thinking about social distancing, having tests and therapeutics and eventually a vaccine is what moves us through this and I hope we have the discipline as a society to do the right thing and I believe we will.”
Federal officials scheduled to testify today include National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield, and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dr. Gary Disbrow.
The federal government has dubbed the effort to find a COVID-19 vaccine Operation Warp Speed.