5 Major Coronavirus Developments - Raimondo Shifts Testing Strategy Again

Tuesday, December 01, 2020

GoLocalProv News Team

Raimondo's narrative to the national audience is different from RI reality

For months, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo has repeatedly gone on national news shows trumpeting the state's success in creating innovative testing programs with CVS and the contact tracing program Sales Force.

But, the reality in Rhode Island was much different.

Raimondo repeatedly the claimed that these initiative were best in class. In May on MSNBC she said:

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"SO WHAT I HAVE TRIED TO DO IS REACH OUT AND ASK FOR PARTNERSHIPS. WE PARTNERED IMMEDIATELY WITH CVS, A HOMETOWN COMPANY HERE TO RAMP UP TESTING.

REACHED OUT TO SALESFORCE VERY EARLY IN THE CRISIS AND SAID, HEY, YOU GUYS HAVE TO HELP ME DEVELOP A BEST IN CLASS CONTACT. TRACING SYSTEM…”

SEE 5 Major Coronavirus Developments Below

The CVS program ended just weeks after Raimondo’s national press tour.

Raimondo finally admitted the contract tracing program had failed and was overwhelmed, but Raimondo went on Morning Joe on November 20 and said that the state's testing leads the country.

She made the claim while the testing program was unraveling and a new director of testing was being installed. Now, Captain Kurt Hinck of the Rhode Island Army National Guard is leading testing.

Raimondo Changes Testing Strategy Again

Dr. Michael Fine has repeatedly questioned Rhode Island's strategy and said the testing has no value if the contact tracing program and isolation programs are not functioning.

"It seems to be testing for testing sake," said Fine, the former RI director of the Department of Health.

As GoLocal reported on Monday, this past weekend's testing program conducted 40% less tests than the previous weekends testing.

Rhode Island is number one in conducting the most tests per capita and number seven in deaths.

Later on Monday, Raimondo roiled out the details of the revamped testing program.

"Last week, we launched a new texting system to let people know that their test results are available at portal.ri.gov/results. Going forward, if you provide your cell phone number when you sign up to get tested, you’ll receive a text message as soon as your results are available on the portal," said Raimondo in the most recent announcement.

"Over the next week, we are dramatically scaling up our daily testing volume, with the goal of doubling the number of state-run tests by the end of our two-week pause," said Raimondo.

But these types of claims have been made before.

In May, Raimondo promised that the state's testing program would be testing 20,000 Rhode Islanders a day by September 1st. Over the past three days, RI tested just 10,000 a day.

WATCH DR. MICHAEL FINE ON GOLOCAL LIVE AT 1:30 PM - NEW TIME

Raimondo now promises:

- "To ensure people with symptoms can get tested quickly, we’re going to be reserving 3,000 daily tests for people with symptoms on the portal at portal.ri.gov. Starting December 2, all asymptomatic Rhode Islanders can get tested through the portal – you no longer need to belong to a certain age group or industry to qualify."

- "We’re deploying our new BinaxNOW tests across the state, which doesn’t require much equipment and can process results in as little as 15 minutes."

- "We’re also adding more testing sites. This week, we’re opening a new, asymptomatic-only testing site at the Dunkin’ Donuts center. And we’re scaling up that site over the next few weeks until it has the capacity to run 5,000 daily BinaxNOW tests."

- "We’re using these new tests to do targeted testing in high-density communities. Last week, we launched a pilot program in Central Falls and will soon have the capacity to run 1,000 daily tests for anyone in the city community, regardless of symptoms."

- "Starting next week, we’re going to run cyclical tests with BinaxNOW for health care workers, teachers and students at select schools, and first responders."

- "Over the next month, we’ll be partnering with the Broad Institute and CIC Health to enable businesses to easily order and conduct tests for their employees."

SEE 5 Major Coronavirus Developments Below

Related Slideshow: 5 Major Coronavirus Developments - December 1, 2020

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China's False Data

CNN is reporting exclusively:

A group of frontline medical workers, likely exhausted, stand huddled together on a video-conference call as China's most powerful man raises his hand in greeting.

It is February 10 in Beijing and President Xi Jinping, who for weeks has been absent from public view, is addressing hospital staff in the city of Wuhan as they battle to contain the spread of a still officially unnamed novel coronavirus.

From a secure room about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from the epicenter, Xi expressed his condolences to those who have died in the outbreak. He urged greater public communication, as around the world concerns mounted about the potential threat posed by the new disease.

That same day, Chinese authorities reported 2,478 new confirmed cases -- raising the total global number to more than 40,000, with fewer than 400 cases occurring outside of mainland China. Yet CNN can now reveal how official documents circulated internally show that this was only part of the picture.

In a report marked "internal document, please keep confidential," local health authorities in the province of Hubei, where the virus was first detected, list a total of 5,918 newly detected cases on February 10, more than double the official public number of confirmed cases, breaking down the total into a variety of subcategories. This larger figure was never fully revealed at that time, as China's accounting system seemed, in the tumult of the early weeks of the pandemic, to downplay the severity of the outbreak.

The previously undisclosed figure is among a string of revelations contained within 117 pages of leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, shared with and verified by CNN. READ MORE HERE

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Hospitalizations Continue to Spike

Rhode Island's field hospital in Cranston has begun to accept patients.

All Rhode Island COVID bed at the hospitals are all filled as of last week.

Nationally, the U.S. have surpased 98,000 hospitalizations -- a new record.

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Pfizer Files in Europe

Pfizer and partner BioNTech announced on Tuesday that they are seeking approval from the European Union for their coronavirus vaccine.

The companies, which have already applied for authorization in the U.S. and U.K., submitted an application on Monday to the European Medicines Agency. That application was accepted on Tuesday by the regulator, the companies said.

Moderna applied for U.S. approval on Monday.