Fauci and other health leaders to update senators on Covid-19 response

Top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, CDC director Robert Redfield, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, and assistant health secretary Brett Giroir will be back in front of a Senate panel this morning to provide an update on the U.S. response to Covid-19. All eyes have been on the CDC in recent days as the agency released guidance that seemed to suggest it had determined that aerosol transmission is a major way that SARS-CoV-2 is spread — only to reverse course and say that guidance had been posted in error.

Here's what else is happening with the pandemic: 

• The U.S. has officially recorded 200,000 Covid-19 deaths, reaching that dubious milestone faster than any other country. “The idea of 200,000 deaths is really very sobering, in some respects stunning,” Fauci told CNN, while some medical groups urged continued precautions, including mask wearing, as the U.S. heads into flu season. 
• A group of 34 Democratic lawmakers yesterday introduced the Science and Transparency Over Politics, or STOP, Act, which would create a task force to investigate any political interference in public health agencies' response to the pandemic. 
• The Washington Post reports that the FDA is expected to issue new guidance on what it would take for the agency to approve a Covid-19 vaccine. The guidance includes tougher standards — such as following participants in late-stage trials for a median of at least two months —  that mean a vaccine is highly unlikely to be approved before election day on Nov. 3. 
• Access to fast and cheap Covid-19 testing is a still a problem for many parts of the U.S., and the writers of a new First Opinion for STAT write that ensuring access to tests that meets these characteristics — even if they're not as accurate as the current gold standard of PCR tests — will be essential to staving off a second wave of the coronavirus. "This will provide essential information for staying up and running this fall and into the winter as we await the development and deployment of safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines," they write.