Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said an aggressive program that focuses on antiviral drugs to treat COVID-19 will be “the next big play” that is needed to help get Ohioans moving toward living with the virus.
“We need an aggressive, like Operation Warp Speed that we did for vaccines, we need that for antiviral drug treatments,” Redfield said in an exclusive interview with News Center 7′s Mike Campbell.
Redfield said over the next 12 to 24 months people will likely begin to see a series of medications on the market that people can take when they get the virus, or if they’ve been exposed, to prevent them from getting it or passing it to others.
U.S. regulators gave emergency use authorization to Pfizer’s pill, Paxlovid, and Merck’s molnupiravir last week. In high-risk patients, both were shown to reduce the chances of hospitalization or death from COVID-19, although Pfizer’s was much more effective, according to the Associated Press.
“It’s going to happen and it’s going to be a really important part of that transition to just learning to live with this virus,” Redfield said.
The former CDC Director’s comments come as Ohio set pandemic records Wednesday for most cases reported in a single day and the most active hospitalizations in the state.
The Ohio Hospital Association reported 5,356 people were actively hospitalized in the state. Previously, the highest single-day report of active hospitalizations came when 5,308 people were hospitalized on Dec. 15, 2020.
The Ohio Department of Health reported an additional 20,320 new COVID cases on Wednesday.
Despite the rising cases and hospitalizations across the state, Redfield said he believes the “big evolution already happened” with COVID-19.
“Delta is a virus that when it replicates, it replicates in your respiratory track, including deep in the lung,” Redfield said. “Omicron, believe it or not, doesn’t like to replicate deep in the lung.”
Redfield said omicron replicates in the neck and above, including in your sinuses.
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“That’s again, why omicron is putting fewer people in the hospital,” Redfield said. “These viruses are going to evolve to be basically more and more infectious particularly in the vaccinated and immune. And they are going to evolve to be less and less pathogenic.”
Pathogenicity refers to the ability of something to cause a disease in a person.
Other health leaders in the Miami Valley also have echoed what Redfield said about the evolution of COVID-19.
“At some point this virus might mutate to a form that is no longer severe,” said Dr. Jeffrey Weinstein, Patient Safety Officer with Kettering Health Network. “This strain, Omicron, may not be that one. It’s really looking more and more like it is not the one”
Dr. Roberto Colon with Miami Valley Hospital said it is clear that there will be a delay in coming anywhere close to treating COVID-19 like the cold or flu, and he does not want to make a prediction about when that time might come.
“What we have learned from COVID is, it is unpredictable, and it is best not to make any of those predictions that we then have to march back,” Colon said.
The evolution of the virus is happening as the CDC announced this week that quarantine and isolation guidance is being scaled back from 10 days to 5 days.
People who have tested positive for COVID-19 but show no symptoms can now leave isolation after five days without being retested. But the CDC said they should still be masked for five days after.
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“I think it’s a sound decision. I think that it’s data driven,” Redfield said. “I think part of it is, how do you take the new science and how do you start to convert that into policy.”
Some policies Redfield said can be overreactions to the growing number of COVID-19 cases and issued a warning.
“There is a tendency for many institutions, many school districts, many health departments to overreact,” Redfield said. “This is not a time to overreact.”
One of those overreactions he said would be moving schools to remote learning.
“This idea that we are going to be doing better for kids by keeping them out of school and going back to virtual learning, wrong answer,” Redfield said. “The public health interest of these kids is to keep them in school.”
Redfield said we’ve reached a part of the pandemic where personal responsibility comes into play in decision making.
“I think what I try to teach is sort of the personal responsibility; you know what mitigation steps you need to embrace, when and where,” he said.
He said that includes wearing masks in certain situations, like a crowded auditorium that may not have much ventilation.
“There’s advantages to masking. There is no doubt about it,” Redfield said. “Part of this is learning what the right role is in this. It’s sort of not one-size-fits-all.”
The former CDC Director also said that the key to vaccination is not through mandates, which is something some businesses and government agencies across the region and country have been pushing.
“It’s better to work with that individual and try to get them to understand that vaccination is the right decision for them and their family,” Redfield said. “As a physician, sometimes that takes three, four, five, six interactions. As opposed to just saying OK, everyone has to be vaccinated it’s a mandate.”