Exclusive | NYC health officials missed early COVID spread by following CDC bureaucrats: Possibility we could have saved lives

The city Health Department missed early detection of COVID-19 because it listened to CDC bureaucrats — losing the chance to potentially spare untold numbers from death, a former agency director claims.The department’s leadership decided to strictly adhere to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s rigid COVID-19 testing guidelines in early 2020, which delayed confirming the presence and transmission of the virus in the Big Apple by more than a month, writes Don Weiss in his new book, “Disease Detectives: True Stories of NYC Outbreaks.”Weiss, a former “surveillance director” for the Big Apple’s Department of Health, was monitoring the situation from the trenches at the time.He said he was frustrated by CDC guidelines that limited testing to suspected infected patients who returned to the US from Wuhan, China, and elsewhere overseas, exhibited severe lower respiratory illness or were exposed to a known case. Many New Yorkers were only exhibiting mild, flu-like symptoms from COVID and would not be tested under the CDC criteria.That meant they were potentially unaware that they had it — and more importantly, could infect others who were in poor health, immunocompromised or with serious pre-existing conditions or illness.At a time without a vaccine, COVID turned into a death sentence for many elderly people and others with serious illness.“I worried that we’d miss the opportunity to prevent an onslaught,” Weiss said in the book of the limited testing.“By following the CDC’s strict criteria for testing we were missing cases.… The overwhelming probability favored mild cases arriving in NYC, but our hands felt tied.”He said he and some others who tracked the disease wanted to test residents suspected of having even mild cases of COVID-19 to start a public health campaign sooner.“But we were voted down and we stuck to CDC’s criteria.

… We needed to go off the CDC script,” wrote Weiss, 67, who directed the city DOH�...