COVID expert offers advice, answers to more of your questions | Betty Lin-Fisher

COVID-19 is far from over, but we as a nation need to stop treating the pandemic as an emergency and “with proper measures, find a way to live with a continuous, low-level amount of COVID among us.”

That includes preparation, including “vaccination, proper ventilation, air filtration, masking and testing – and making sure these are widespread and easily accessible for all, with clear guidance on how to use them most effectively.”

Those are the words of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. Emanuel was also a member of the Biden-Harris transition COVID-19 task force and is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff for President Barack Obama, former mayor of Chicago and new U.S. ambassador to Japan.

Emanuel on Jan. 27 wrote those thoughts in a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion piece with Rick Bright, who heads the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute and was also on the COVID task force.

Emanuel was the featured lecturer on Thursday for Northeast Ohio Medical University’s monthly speaker series. I have stepped in recently and have been moderating the question-and-answer portion of NEOMED’s VITALS series, which stands for Visionary Health Leadership in Action.

Each month, regional and national leaders in the medical field get 17 minutes for their presentation — the average duration of a physician-patient visit — to engage medical professionals and students on topics intended to ignite positive change in health care and develop strategic, thoughtful leaders. I then moderate about a 30-to-40-minute Q-and-A session.

While many of the topics covered tend to be geared more for the academic and professional medical community who tunes in to the presentation, which has been virtual during the pandemic, Emanuel’s Q-and-A session, in particular, had a wide variety of discussions that I thought my readers would be interested in, particularly when it came to COVID.

"One of the things that omicron has made clear is that what is often been called the 'No COVID strategy', the idea that we're going to eradicate COVID, is clearly wrong,” Emanuel said on Thursday when I asked him to highlight the thoughts from his opinion piece.

“We've got to re-orient ourselves to how do we live with COVID and live with it in a way that allows us to live normally,” he said.

We’re not there yet and there are still far too many deaths from COVID daily, Emanuel said.

The nation’s immunity needs to go up, both through COVID infections — though Emanuel said “that’s probably not a great idea at the moment and the other is vaccinations” — and with vaccine boosters.

The vaccination rates have been at a constant plateau and needs to increase, he said.

Better therapeutic treatments also are needed for COVID, including a need for a multi-drug cocktail against COVID, similar to how HIV is treated, so that any mutations of the virus can be hard to escape the treatment, he said.

Better air-handling systems to increase intake of outside air and use of efficient filters is also needed, he said, and cities should consider giving incentives for upgrades or modifying their building codes to require all new buildings to include ventilation and filtration upgrades.

In addition, Emanuel said there needs to be widespread and easy access to high-quality masks, such as N95s or KN95s, which work better than cloth, and free or low-cost testing and generous paid-leave policies while people are contagious and need to stay home.

Long-haul COVID

Emanuel said more needs to be understood about long-COVID, or long-haul symptoms that some patients continue to have after the infection. It is unknown how common it is among patients, including the unvaccinated, vaccinated or boosted, he said.

When answering a question from the audience about why vaccinated and boosted people were getting COVID, Emanuel said the vaccines were not meant to prevent getting the virus, but to prevent serious illness and death.

“Your chance if you're vaccinated and boosted of dying (from COVID) is one in 34,000. Just phenomenally low. And your chance of hospitalization is also incredibly low. People who are unvaccinated compared to the vaccinated have a 23 times higher risk of ending up in the hospital.

“It does appear and I'm just going to say appear that being vaccinated reduces your chance of long COVID — and, by the way, if you get COVID, getting a vaccine soon after getting infection reduces your chance of getting long COVID also if you haven't been vaccinated and that again does appear to be a benefit. How much we don't have a good quantification of; we need to get back good quantification.”

To watch the Vitals presentation, go to www.neomed.edu/vitals/

More of your COVID questions answered

I received good feedback to last week’s column, which included some frequently asked questions about COVID. If you missed it, go to www.tinyurl.com/bettylinfisher

Here’s two more that readers sent in, which I think could be helpful.

More: Having a hard time keeping the latest COVID recommendations straight? We have answers

I’m worried about the free at-home tests being delivered by mail in freezing temperatures. Can I still use them?

The Food and Drug Administration answered this question on its website on Jan. 22. "Test developers perform stability testing to ensure that the test performance will remain stable when tests are stored at various temperatures, including shipping during the summer in very hot regions and in the winter in very cold regions,” the FDA said.

“However, test performance may be impacted if the test is used while it is still cold, such as being used outdoors in freezing temperatures or being used immediately after being brought inside from freezing temperatures.”

Generally, the tests are expected to be performed in an environment that is between 59 degrees to 86 degrees.

The FDA suggests bringing the test, which may have been delivered in below-freezing temperatures, inside and leaving it unopened at room temperature for at least two hours before opening it.

“As long as the test line(s) appear as described in the instructions, you can be confident that the test is performing as it should. If the line(s) do not appear in the correct location(s) and within the correct time as shown in the test instructions when you perform the test, then the results may not be accurate, and a new test is needed to get an accurate result," the FDA stated.

If you’re storing your test for future use, there have also been recommendations not to keep it in your bathroom near your shower or bath, where room temperatures will fluctuate.

If you haven’t ordered your four free-at home tests (four is the limit per residence), then go to www.covidtests.gov or call 800-232-0233. The tests began shipping two weeks ago. I got mine, but I’ve heard from others who ordered on the first day like me that they haven’t received them yet.

I heard Medicare, unlike private insurers, will not reimburse recipients for buying at-home COVID tests. Is that true?

That actually was true last week, but in an announcement on Feb. 3, the Biden administration said Medicare starting this spring would be working with pharmacies to let Medicare recipients get up to eight free tests each month. Details have not yet been announced.

More: Medicare to offer free at-home COVID tests by spring

That’s good news for the more than 61 million Americans on Medicare.

Medicare had said people with Medicare Advantage plans should check with their plan to see if they are offering reimbursements now.

In the meantime, as mentioned above, all U.S. residences can request up to four free at-home tests from the government through the mail and Medicare recipients can also get free PCR and antigen tests at pharmacies, at free testing sites and ordered by physicians.

Beacon Journal staff reporter Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ To see her most recent stories and columns, go to www.tinyurl.com/bettylinfisher

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Column: National COVID-19 expert shares the latest information