Modernas chief executive officer Stphane Bancel (pictured above) said that he expects Moderna to be ready to submit its COVID-19 vaccine candidate to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November.
Bancel revealed the possible timelines for approval and availability of the companys mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate at the US Pharma and Biotech Conference hosted by the Financial Times last week.
He added that he expects the Moderna vaccine will be ready for use in late March or early 2021, with the aim of submitting the candidate to the FDA for emergency use authorisation on 25 November 2020.
Beyond an emergency use authorisation, Bancel said that Moderna will not be ready to submit its vaccine to the FDA for a Biologics License Application (BLA) until at least late January 2021.
If its BLA is approved, Moderna will be able to launch its vaccine within the general population, meaning the shot will be available for wide-scale use.
"25 November is the time we will have enough safety data to be able to put into an EUA file that we would send to the FDA, assuming that the safety data is good, ie, a vaccine is deemed to be safe,"said Bancel, according to theFinancial Times.
"The EUA, we think, will be an important medical tool to start addressing people at very high risk, like healthcare worker[s], like the elderly," he added, according to CNN.
In July, Modernas COVID-19 vaccine mRNA-1273 entered a late-stage phase 3 clinical trial, evaluating the shot on 30,000 study participants.
Interim analysis from the phase 1 study of mRNA-1273 was published in early July, demonstrating that the vaccine produced rapid and strong immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 in all participants tested.
Following two doses with the vaccine, neutralising antibody levels among participants were similar to those seen in individuals who had tested positive and recovered from COVID-19.
Last month, Moderna also revealed results from the phase 1 study, which showed promise in older adults, with adults aged 56-70 and aged 71 years and older exhibiting a strong immune response and similar levels of neutralising antibodies compared to younger participants.
Bancel previously told Business Insider that the company would most likely know in November whether or not its COVID-19 vaccine works, supporting the most recent timeline projection.
There will be no silver bullet that brings COVID-19 to an endnot even a vaccine, said Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan.
During a conversation with Fast Company Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Mehta, the chief executive of the pharmaceutical giant laid out how he thinks the global health system failed and why hes optimistic about the future. Part of the problem, Narasimhan said, is that the world was in a particularly vulnerable place when the pandemic hit.
Over the last decade there has been a decline in overall public health preparedness within the system in the United States and around the world, he said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival. As the investment goes down, the preparedness goes down, so I do think we were at a unique moment where we were more susceptible than we would have been a few years ago.
The CEO led Novartiss vaccine program during the 2009 H1N1 virus. He said he has seen the same mistakes repeated when a deadly disease strikes. What Ive seen consistently is the world really falls short on three dimensions, said Narasimhan. These include a lack of:
When a disease is spreading fast, public health officials must share information as soon as they have it, he said, though politics can interfere with that. World leaders always consider how such information will impact trade and the economy.
In the internet age, free-flowing information can also lead to confusion. He said social networks have made it easy to share new COVID-19 research published online. Scientists draw conclusions from an accumulation of information and replicated studies. But the general public can latch onto a single study and circulate it as ground truth. That creates a difficult environment for sending a unified public health message.
The power of social media is that it is so fast, much faster than the power of our ability to publish rigorous data, to do all the proper experiments, Narasimhan said. I think that creates this kind of perception that because something is said online it might be true or it must be true if it gets circulated enough.
Yet, he said, there have been encouraging moments during the pandemic as well. China sequenced the genome for the coronavirus early. That allowed the pharmaceutical industry to start testing out vaccine candidates. In some places, lockdown measures happened at an unprecedented scale, keeping transmission low.
Narasimhan also said the medical community was quick to repurpose existing drugs for COVID-19 treatment. Progress on COVID-19, he said, will continue to be iterative.
There will be no one thing, he said, that takes us back to the way things were. He thinks we will learn to live with this coronavirus the way we live with others: using a combination of vaccines, therapeutics, and other technologies. That means life will eventually edge close to normal: The accumulation of all the innovation thats being pursued right now will make life come back to . . . [something] similar to what weve had in the past.
Florida stands ready to distribute and administer COVID-19 vaccine when its available WFTV Orlando
Five things to know on a vaccine for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) were spotlighted; Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) will buy heart drugmaker MyoKardia Inc for $13.1 billion; a look at the importance of health information technology (IT) in rural areas.
Kaiser Health News spotlighted 5 things to know on a vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Among the points detailed is that a vaccine would be vital to fighting the spread of the virus, but the effectiveness of the vaccine candidates is not yet known and would require real-world evaluation as well. Moreover, the wait time in which the vaccine would be distributed indicates that current measures to curb infection, such as mask wearing, will remain a primary preventive approach.
Announced today, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) will buy heart drugmaker MyoKardia Inc for $13.1 billion in cash. Bloomberg reports that with this move, BMS will expand its availability of heart therapies and help diversify the company beyond oncology. Additionally, BMS will receive access to MyoKardias lead product mavacamten, an experimental drug that is designed to treat obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, in which the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick.
A report published by Forbes highlights the importance of health information technology (IT) in rural areas, especially as rural hospitals continue to struggle financially from the effects of COVID-19. Rural hospitals, like most others, experienced deferrals in elective surgeries and other types of nonCOVID-19 care due to state restrictions and patient fear. As noted in the article, health IT can keep rural hospitals thriving in the community and deliver care closer to patients homes via telehealth consultations and virtual doctor visits.
Airborne transmission of the coronavirus can occur, especially in poorly ventilated and enclosed spaces, according to the CDC. VO Images/Getty Images hide caption
Airborne transmission of the coronavirus can occur, especially in poorly ventilated and enclosed spaces, according to the CDC.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says the coronavirus can be spread through airborne particles that can linger in the air "for minutes or even hours" even among people who are more than 6 feet apart.
The CDC still says that SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is most frequently spread among people in close contact with one another, through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks. But in new guidance published Monday on its website, the agency also acknowledged that under certain circumstances, people have become infected by smaller particles that can linger in the air in enclosed spaces that are poorly ventilated.
"Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising," the CDC said. In such cases, the CDC said, there's evidence that the amount of smaller infectious droplets and particles that a contagious person produces "became concentrated enough to spread the virus to other people" even if they were more than 6 feet away. In some cases, the CDC said, transmission occurred "shortly after the person with COVID-19 had left" the room.
Many experts who study the airborne transmission of viruses have been warning that the coronavirus can spread through the air for months. Last month, many experts cheered when the CDC seemed to address the issue, posting an update that suggested that aerosols tiny airborne particles expelled from a person's mouth when they speak, sing, sneeze or breathe might be among the most common ways the coronavirus is spreading. But the agency took down that guidance a few days later, saying it was a draft proposal that was posted to its website in error. The CDC's latest guidance stops short of calling airborne transmission "common."
"It's gratifying to see CDC acknowledge that there's a role for airborne transmission with this virus," said Donald Milton, an aerobiologist at the University of Maryland and coauthor of a letter published in the journal Science on Monday that calls for clearer public health guidance on how the coronavirus spreads through the air. However, the distinction between the CDC and Milton and his cosigners is how often airborne transmission happens.
In a call with reporters Monday, Milton and his cosigners on the Science letter said the evidence suggests that airborne transmission is probably the dominant form of transmission even in close-contact situations within 6 feet of an infected person.
"Airborne transmission happens by inhalation of virus that's in the air," said Linsey Marr, a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech and an expert in aerosol science. "And this is happening even more frequently when people are close to each other."
So how does this affect how we should protect ourselves in practical terms? Marr and other experts said people should be wearing a mask whenever they are indoors with people outside of their household pod even if they are standing more than 6 feet apart, or even in a situation where a plexiglass barrier is in place. Marr said masks are also a good idea outdoors if you are going to be in prolonged contact with people not in your household, even if you are more than 6 feet apart. "It's a grayish area where I think adopting the precautionary principle is best," Marr said.
It also means that "ventilation really is just so important," said Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and lead author of the Science letter. She recommends opening doors and windows, moving gatherings outdoors whenever possible, and the use of standalone air filters in rooms. (Prather, Marr and other scientists offer more tips in this FAQ on improving ventilation.)
In addition to improving ventilation indoors, the CDC said people should stay at least 6 feet away from others whenever possible, avoid crowded indoors spaces and as always wash their hands regularly.
And we know that at least eight people -- including Trump and first lady Melania Trump -- who attended last Saturday's announcement of Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court in the Rose Garden have since tested positive.
But beyond that, there are still a LOT of unknowns -- questions that the White House either refuses to answer or simply cannot provide good answers on. Below, a list of just some of those questions.
* What happens if Barrett isn't confirmed before Election Day?: The preference for the White House and Senate Republicans is to get Barrett on the Court before November 3. But as noted above, that is not a sure thing at the moment. If the votes aren't there before the election, my guess is that Trump and Senate GOPers will try to confirm her in a lame-duck session -- meaning one after the election but before the next Congress is sworn in. That's no big deal if Trump wins and Republicans keep control of the Senate. But if Trump loses and Republicans lose control of the Senate in the November election; it's not clear whether McConnell would be able to round up the 50 votes he needs to get Barrett confirmed and, even if he could, how that would play with a public who would watch Republican senators who had lost cast a hugely monumental vote to install a justice on the nation's highest court for life.
* If Trump is discharged, does that mean he is out of the woods?: I am not a doctor (sorry Mom!) but all indications are that if Trump is released by his medical team from Walter Reed that they believe is in out of immediate danger from the virus for now. Conley put it this way: "Though he may not be entirely out of the woods yet, the team and I agree that all our evaluations, and most importantly, his clinical status, support the President's safe return home, where he'll be surrounded by world class medical care."
"We're in a bit of uncharted territory when it comes to a patient that received the therapies he has so early in the course," Conley said on Monday. "So we're looking to this weekend -- if we can get through Monday with him remaining the same improvements -- better yet, then we will all take that final deep sigh of relief."
What lessons should we learn from the fact that the president of the United States has caught Covid-19?
There is one simple one, which the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, keeps teaching but which seems extremely difficult to learn: There are no magic bullets against Covid-19.
No single strategy or technology is going to rescue society from the pandemic: not masks, not better testing, not a drug, not vaccines. For any of these, its easy to get caught up in optimism and hope. But the reality is that fighting the coronavirus requires doing many things correctly.
advertisement
That hasnt stopped people President Trump among them from grasping for single, easy solutions. In March, Trump tweeted that hydroxychloroquine, given with the antibiotic azithromycin, could be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. They were not. He said the virus would miraculously disappear with warmer weather. Outbreaks have continued. And lately, hes been betting on a vaccine, saying it could even come before a very special date, meaning Election Day.
The entire pandemic has been about magic bullets, says Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health.
advertisement
But were not taking down this enemy with a single shot. Instead, everyone has to become an oddsmaker or a military commander trying to minimize the chance that the virus will breach their defenses.
The strategy of protecting the White House was a clear example. To keep the president safe, everyone who might come into contact with him was given a rapid test for SARS-CoV-2. But, as STAT reported in April, the test was thought by many outside experts to miss some infections. More than that, any test would miss some infections. No test is going to catch every case of SARS-CoV-2 every time. Every test has false negatives.
Yet the White House apparently viewed a positive test result as carte blanche to behave as if SARS-Cov-2 didnt exist. At the Rose Garden event announcing the presidents Supreme Court pick, attendees hugged, shook hands, and gathered inside as if a negative test result offered complete safety. There were few masks in sight.
In contrast, broad public health strategies against the virus that rely on testing such as proposals from the Rockefeller Foundation or the proposal championed by Harvard Professor Michael Mina in which the country is flooded with cheap, less accurate tests dont put such faith in a single test. The idea is that testing often, and catching cases when you can, will reduce the number of times healthy people are exposed to infected ones. Like everything else with Covid-19, its an odds game, and debates over any strategys utility are arguments about those odds.
The same is true of masks. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified to Congress last month on their benefit: These face masks are the most important, powerful public health tool we have, he said. Nobody knows exactly how much protection a mask provides. Thats part of why some experts were skeptical of masking early in the pandemic. But evidence from studies of the physics of transmission and disease spread in countries with different policies on masking have now led to near-universal agreement that masking is a good idea. They reduce the odds of the virus spreading.
But you wouldnt bet on masks without testing- or testing without masks. Or either without social distancing. Its not that there is something special about keeping six feet apart from people some coughs may spread coronavirus farther. But if everybody stays six feet away, the odds of transmission go down.
And then there are vaccines. People are placing hope in the idea that a vaccine will allow us to go back to normal, said C. Michael Gibson, a Harvard cardiologist known for his ability to analyze trial data. I think thats false hope.
Its not that the vaccines in development wont work, or that a vaccine wont be a key tool in combating the virus. But we could end up still needing masks sometimes or at least we wont be back to shaking hands.
At least three vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are likely to have results later this year or early next. And there are many more in testing behind them. Its not unlikely that at least one, and possibly several, will be effective enough to work.
But a vaccine could be approved if it reduces symptomatic cases of Covid-19 by just half. And whether it reduces transmission of the virus, or just keeps people from getting sick, is another open question. Whats more, all of the vaccines may be unpleasant to take they can cause fevers, fatigue, and other side effects and hard to distribute. The Pfizer shot, in particular, needs to be kept at temperatures much colder than an ordinary freezer.
A vaccine that didnt slow the spread of the virus but meant fewer people ended up in the hospital would still be useful. And there is every chance some of the vaccines may outperform this bar. But even several great vaccines probably dont turn off the pandemic like a switch. Jha said that he has advised the Biden campaign that if he wins, they will be dealing with the pandemic well into the next presidential term.
Dealing with that means not jumping the gun. Searching for a magic solution can leave you worse off than if you did nothing. Look at the case of hydroxychloroquine. Even those who think the drug has some benefit, perhaps in preventing the disease, should be able to see from the data from several randomized studies that the way it was used during March and April, in hospitalized patients, was wrong. It is simply clear it did not help.
Whats required now to return to a more normal life is the same thing that has been required all along: a series of incremental strategies (pushing testing, requiring masks, developing vaccines and treatments), and clear priorities (do you want to open schools or bars?) driven by an informed public debate about what matters to society.
As H.L. Mencken famously said, for every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Whats required here isnt Rambo-style heroics. Its clear strategy, and the kind of courage and patience under fire that soldiers in the American Revolution needed when they were told, Dont fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
McDonalds, Mulizwa said.
Not me, Sow said. I want to get some steak. Maybe some chicken. Something grilled.
I said something to the effect that the worst was behind them, and Sow grinned. Were still living, he said.
Wuhan memories remained fresh, and the materials of documentation were also close at hand. People sometimes handed over manuscripts, and they took out their phones and pulled up photographs and messages from January and February. But I wondered how much of this material would dissipate over time.
In town, I met two Chinese journalists in their twenties who were visiting from out of town. They had been posted during the period of the sealed city: back then, anybody sent to cover events in Wuhan had to stay for the long haul. One was a director of streaming media whom Ill call Han, and he had found that government-run outlets generally wanted footage that emphasized the victory over the disease, not the suffering of Wuhan residents. Han hoped that eventually hed find other ways to use the material. It will be in the hard drive, he said, tapping his camera.
The other journalist, a print reporter Ill call Yin, reminisced about the unusual freedom the press had been granted for a brief period in January. Journalists reported on whistle-blower figures like Li Wenliang, and they exposed some early missteps, like a failure by the Red Cross to distribute critical medical equipment. Such problems were quickly fixed, and Yin felt glad to be of service to society. I could see what it means to be the fourth estate, she said. But, in February, as the government started to get control of the pandemic, it also tightened restrictions on the press. A friend of mine said that it was a very short spring, Yin said.
After that, Yin reported on a number of issues that couldnt be published or completed, and she often talked with scientists and officials who didnt want to say too much. One person said, Ten years later, if the climate has changed, Ill tell you my story, Yin told me. He knew that he would be judged by history. She continued, These people are inside the system, but they also know that they are inside history.
Yin described an interview with an employee at a research institution who was so upset that he began to weep. He wouldnt answer her questions, but he said that he had been keeping a detailed diary. She hoped that someday such materials would be released.
I suspect that this will eventually happen, because nowadays there are so many ways to preserve information. In time, we will learn more, but the delay is important to the Communist Party. It handles history the same way that it handles the pandemica period of isolation is crucial. Throughout the Communist era, there have been many moments of quarantined history: the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the massacre around Tiananmen Square. In every case, an initial silencing has been followed by sporadic outbreaks of leaked information. Wuhan will eventually follow the same pattern, but for the time being many memories will remain in the sealed city.
When I spoke with scientists outside China, they werent focussed on the governments early missteps. I tend to take a charitable view of countries that are at the beginning stage of epidemics, Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me, in a phone conversation. According to her, its unrealistic to expect that any country could have stopped this particular virus at its source. Ive always believed that this thing was going to spread, she said.
Wafaa El-Sadr, the director of ICAP, a global-health center at Columbia University, pointed out that Chinese scientists had quickly sequenced the viruss genome, which was made available to researchers worldwide on January 11th. I honestly think that they had a horrific situation in Wuhan and they were able to contain it, she said. There were mistakes early on, but they did act, and they shared fast.
For much of El-Sadrs career, she has worked on issues related to AIDS in the United States, Africa, and elsewhere. After years of research, scientists eventually came to the consensus that H.I.V. most likely started through the bushmeat tradethe first human was probably infected after coming into contact with a primate or primate meat. El-Sadr views the coronavirus as another inevitable outcome of peoples encroachment on the natural world. We are now living through two concomitant massive pandemics that are the result of spillover from animal to human hosts, the H.I.V. and the COVID pandemics, she wrote to me, in an e-mail. Never in history has humanity experienced something along this scale and scope.
Theres a tendency to believe that we would know the source of the coronavirus if the Chinese had been more forthcoming, or if they hadnt cleaned out the Huanan market before stalls and animals could be studied properly. But Peter Daszak, a British disease ecologist who has collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for sixteen years on research on bat coronaviruses, told me that its typical to fail to gather good data from the site of an initial outbreak. Once people get sick, local authorities inevitably focus on the public-health emergency. You send in the human doctors, not the veterinarians, he said, in a phone conversation. And the doctors response is to clean out the market. They want to stop the infections.
Daszak believes the virus probably circulated for weeks before the Wuhan outbreak, and he doubts that the city was the source. There are bats in Wuhan, but it was the wrong time of year, he told me. It was winter, and bats are not out as much. His research has indicated that, across Southeast Asia, more than a million people each year are infected by bat coronaviruses. Some individuals trap, deal, or raise animals that might serve as intermediary hosts. But generally its people who live near bat caves, Daszak said. Every night, the bats fly out, and they urinate and defecate. Some might get on a surface, or on somebodys clothes, and then they touch their mouths or noses.
Daszak said that he had always thought that such an outbreak was most likely to occur in Kunming or Guangzhou, southern cities that are close to many bat caves and that also have an intensive wildlife trade. He thinks that Chinese scientists are probably now searching hospital freezers for lab samples of people who died of pneumonia shortly before the outbreak. You would take those samples and look for the virus, he said. Theyll find something eventually. These things just dont happen overnight; it requires a lot of work. Weve seen this repeatedly with every disease. It turns out that it was already trickling through the population.
Daszak is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization based in New York. EcoHealth has become the target of conspiracy theorists, including some who claim that the virus was man-made. Daszak and many prominent virologists say that anything created in a lab would show clear signs of manipulation. Theres also speculation that the outbreak started when researchers accidentally released a coronavirus they were studying at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But theres no evidence of a leak, or even that the institute has ever studied a virus that could cause a COVID-19 outbreak.
Scientists in China are under incredible pressure to publish, Daszak said. It really drives openness and transparency. He has spent a good deal of time in Wuhan, and co-authored more than a dozen papers with Chinese colleagues. If we had found a virus that infected human cells and spread within a cell culture, we would have put the information out there, he said. In sixteen years, Ive never come across the slightest hint of subterfuge. Theyve never hidden data. Ive never had a situation where one lab person tells me one thing and the other says something else. If you were doing things that you didnt want people to know about, why would you invite foreigners into the lab?
In April, President Trump told reporters that the U.S. should stop funding research connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Shortly after Trumps comments, the National Institutes of Health cancelled a $3.7-million grant to EcoHealth, which had been studying how bat coronaviruses are transmitted to people. EcoHealth has appealed the decision, but Daszak doesnt expect a change unless theres a new Administration.
I asked Daszak why, if he has such faith in the openness of his Wuhan colleagues, the Chinese government has been so closed about other aspects of the outbreak. He said that science is one thing, and politics something else; he thinks that officials were embarrassed about the early mistakes, and in response they simply shut down all information. Youre a journalist in China, he said. I dont know what you would say about the Chinese idea of P.R., but Id say theyre pretty terrible.
One afternoon, I drove past Huoshenshan, the newly constructed emergency hospital. The site was cordoned off; people told me that the hospital had remained vacant in case the virus returns. But this seems unlikely, and Wuhan, like the rest of China, is looking to the next stage of the pandemic. At the beginning of July, China National Biotec Group, a subsidiary of a state-owned pharmaceutical company called Sinopharm, completed construction of a vaccine-manufacturing plant in Wuhan. The project began while the city was still sealed. Thats the politically correct thing to do, a Shanghai-based biotech entrepreneur told me. To show the world that the heroic people of Wuhan have come back.
The plant has the capacity to produce more than a hundred million vaccine doses a year. Another C.N.B.G. factory, in Beijing, can make an additional hundred million doses a year of a different version of the vaccine. Both plants are already producing and stockpiling the vaccines, which have almost completed Phase III trials. Because China essentially has no active pandemic, C.N.B.G. had to go far afield in order to find subjects. Currently, researchers have enrolled more than fifty thousand people in the United Arab Emirates, Peru, and other countries in South America and the Middle East.
Yiwu He, the chief innovation officer at the University of Hong Kong, told me that the C.N.B.G. vaccine has already been given to a number of Chinese government officials, under an emergency-use approval granted by the authorities. I know a few government officials personally, and they told me that they took the vaccine, he said, in a phone conversation. He thought that the total number was probably around a hundred. Its middle-level officials, he said. Vice-ministers, mayors, vice-mayors.
Pharmaceutical executives have also been expected to lead the way, like the construction manager who donned P.P.E. in order to escort his workers into the patient ward. Every senior executive at Sinopharm and C.N.B.G. has been vaccinated, He said. Including the C.E.O. of Sinopharm, the chairman of the board, every vice-presidenteveryone. The Chinese press has reported that vaccinations have also been administered to hundreds of thousands of citizens in high-risk areas around the world. (C.N.B.G. did not respond to a request for comment.)
In the West, Chinas image has been badly damaged by the pandemic and by other recent events. The country has tightened political crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and, in May, after Australia called for an investigation into the origins of the virus, China responded furiously, placing new tariffs and restrictions on Australian goods ranging from barley to beef. But He believes that the situation is fluid. All of these feelings can turn around quickly, he told me. I think that once China has a vaccine, and if they can help other countries, it can make a huge difference.
"Sen. Grassley's doctors have not recommended he be tested as he has not come into close contact with anyone suspected of having or confirmed to have coronavirus," his aide Michael Zona said, suggesting that while Grassley was near and around those sick senators his contact with them was not close enough or long enough to warrant getting tested.
Grassley's decision is different than other top officials above and below him in the line of succession -- like Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and key members of the President's Cabinet -- who are being tested regularly, especially now that President Donald Trump has contracted the disease. But it puts Grassley in line with some GOP senators who told CNN they don't believe they need to be tested based on US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Capitol Physician guidelines, despite working alongside members who are positive for the disease.
An aide to Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, one of a handful of GOP senators who does not wear a mask at all times, said the senator is "following the advice of the Capitol Physician," who said "if you experience symptoms you should get tested, and he has not experienced symptoms."
Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri who chairs the Rules Committee and an advocate for more coronavirus testing on Capitol Hill, has not been tested because he "has not had any recent interactions that meet the CDC guidelines for testing," according to an aide.
Same with Sen. Mitt Romney a Republican from Utah, according to an aide. "There's no known exposure risk to him at this time, though we are monitoring," the aide said.
Senate Republicans spend a lot of time together. They met three times as a caucus last week, holding regular policy lunches in a large room in the Hart building with tables spread apart for social distancing. They remove their masks to eat and to speak, according to attendees. The senators who have tested positive -- Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina -- attended the lunches last week.
Grassley typically attends those lunches although his staff did not respond to multiple requests to confirm he attended them last week. But the senator did attend two Senate Judiciary Committee meetings last week, where most senators took off their masks when they spoke. During a hearing Wednesday with former FBI Director James Comey, Lee and Tillis were seen not wearing masks, although Grassley was not seated near them.
Also at the hearing was GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas whose spokesman declined to say if he's been tested. Drew Brandewie said the senator "followed all CDC guidelines last week during the Judiciary meetings and has not interacted with any of the members who tested positive."
A handful of other Republican senators have declined to say whether they've been tested for coronavirus.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his staff have refused to say if he has been tested for coronavirus in recent days, or explain why he doesn't want to disclose the information. He resisted questions on the issue at a news conference in Kentucky on Friday.
"Have I ever been tested? Yes. I'm not going to answer questions about when," McConnell said.
Some Democrats on the Senate Judiciary committee said they were tested for coronavirus after attending meetings with the Covid-positive senators, even though they did not come into close contact.
"Senator Leahy was tested for COVID-19 earlier today since he attended the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, where it is now known that two senators were present who have tested positive for the virus. While he did not come into close contact with these two senators for an extended period of time, he took the test at the advice of the Capitol Physician," said David Carle, a spokesperson for Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who tested negative for the virus.
Similarly -- Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who also sits on the Judiciary committee and attended the hearings -- was tested for coronavirus out of "an abundance of caution" and he was negative, according to his press secretary Karolina Wasiniewska.
Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, also reported testing negative on Twitter.
Although some Republicans are not pushing to get tested, others have done it and tested negative, including: Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio, Todd Young of Indiana, David Perdue of Georgia, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, among others.
Three senators who fear they were in contact with Lee, Tillis or Johnson said they would self-isolate to ensure they did not contract the virus. They are Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.
On Monday, McConnell was silent and did not respond to questions from CNN on whether he would allow coronavirus positive senators to vote on Barrett.
Tested Positive
HopeHicks
NicholasLuna
RonnaMcDaniel
ThomTillis
BillStepien
John I.Jenkins
KayleighMcEnany
ChadGilmartin
KarolineLeavitt
GregLaurie
President Trumps announcement Friday that he and the first lady had tested positive for the coronavirus sent government officials scrambling to determine who else might have been exposed. By Monday afternoon, more than a dozen people who had been in contact with the president or attended White House or campaign events last week had said they had tested positive.
Several people who met with the president last week said they had since tested negative. But it can take days for someone who has been exposed to the virus to develop symptoms or to test positive. On Monday morning, Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said she had tested positive.
The outbreak has extended beyond Mr. Trumps inner circle to threaten several people who may not have had direct contact with him. Two deputies in the White House Press Office have tested positive, and three journalists have also tested positive after covering White House events.
Here is a look at where Mr. Trump traveled and the people with whom he met in the days before his positive test.
In addition to regular meetings and news conferences at the White House, Mr. Trump attended several large gatherings in the past week, including the first presidential debate in Cleveland and rallies in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. He went ahead with a round table and reception in New Jersey on Thursday after a close aide, Hope Hicks, tested positive for the virus.
Positive
Negative
Not known
EveningCampaign rally in Newport News, Va.
HopeHicks
MarkMeadows
DanScavino
11:00 a.m.Latinos for Trump event in Doral, Fla.
KellyLoeffler
BrianKemp
DavidPerdue
BenCarson
RonnaMcDaniel
ToddRicketts
TommyHicks Jr.
The president and the first lady met with the judge and her family in the White House before attending a Rose Garden ceremony attended by 200 people. Few wore masks or kept socially distant.
ThomTillis
MarkMeadows
WilliamP. Barr
Alex M.Azar II
JoshHawley
KellyLoeffler
BenSasse
Pat A.Cipollone
John I.Jenkins
ThomTillis
GregLaurie
ChadGilmartin
KarolineLeavitt
KayleighMcEnany
WilliamP. Barr
MarkMeadows
BenSasse
JoshHawley
KellyLoeffler
Pat A.Cipollone
KayleighMcEnany
DanScavino
Thousands of supporters came to the rally near an airport hangar, and many were unmasked. Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said: It is gravely concerning that the president would insist on holding this event with blatant disregard for social distancing and masking requirements.
10:00 a.m.Visit to Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Va.
Chris Christie, who helped Mr. Trump prepare for the debate, told Good Morning America that five or six people were in the room with the president and that no one wore masks.
HopeHicks
KayleighMcEnany
Scores of attendees sat close together and unmasked at a White House reception in honor of military families and those who have died in service.
KayleighMcEnany
PeterNavarro
RobPortman
MikeTurner
Alex M.Azar II
BetsyDeVos
RobertFord
TateReeves
BrettGiroir
HopeHicks
BillStepien
DanScavino
JimJordan
MarkMeadows
Robert C.OBrien
KayleighMcEnany
ChrisWallace
MarkMeadows
JimJordan
StevenMnuchin
MarkMeadows
HopeHicks
NicholasLuna
KayleighMcEnany
DanScavino
MarkMeadows
5:30 p.m.Fund-raiser in Shorewood, Minn.
Thousands of supporters crowded the presidents rally in Duluth, Minn. Mayor Emily Larson said attendees should get tested.
Travel to and from Bedminster, N.J.
Mr. Trump attended a round-table and a fundraising event at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. Gov. Phil D. Murphy, a Democrat, said Friday that the state had begun contact tracing, and urged all attendees to self-quarantine and get tested.
Reception in Bedminster, N.J.
