MEDICAL

Coronavirus : Is U.S. Prepared?

Hospitals Brace for Potential Spread of Virus in U.S. Amid Tough Flu Season

BY DENNIS THOMPSON

ospitals are bracing for the potential spread of coronavirus in the United States, trying to plan for a potential onslaught of sick patients combined with potential supply shortages.

e strict quarantine and screen ing measures enacted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have given hospitals breathing space to review their pandemic plans and stockpile needed equipment, said Dr. Mark Jarrett, the chief quality ocer for Northwell Health, a New York hospital chain.

“We’re buying some time now that it hasn’t really spread so much in the United States,” Jarrett said. “at’s giving us a chance to gear up facto ries and address supply chain issues.” But the United States is in the throes of a tough u season that’s already straining the capacity of many hospitals, said Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety for the American Hospital As sociation.

“It is a tough u season. It’s a very bad u season. And many of our hos pitals are pretty darned full,” Foster said. “If there were to be an outbreak here in the next couple of weeks, the overlap means that many hospitals would be full to the brim, if not over - owing.”

To make matters worse, the coronavirus epidemic has hampered supply chains leading out of China and is highlighting the problems with American hospitals’ dependence on “just-in-time” supply orders, experts said. H

PROTECTING HEALTH CARE WORKERS FIRST Take, for example, the N95 respirator mask, which is primarily manufactured in China.

is mask provides much better protection for health care workers than the thinner masks worn in surgeries, said Shelly Schwedhelm, Nebraska Medicine’s executive direc tor of emergency management and biopreparedness. Nebraska Medical Center treated three Ebola patients in its biocontainment unit in 2014 and recently opened a nearby quarantine clinic for coronavirus-infected people re-entering the United States from China.

“e folks that are going to have the closest contact with patients should use the N95,” Schwedhelm said, not ing that procedure masks or surgical

PHOTO: GERD ALTMANN / PIXABAY It’s a very bad u season. And many of our hospitals are pretty darned full. If there were to be an outbreak here in the next couple of weeks, the overlap means that many hospitals would be full to the brim, if not overowing. NANCY FOSTER vice president of quality and patient safety for the American Hospital Association ” “

masks “just don’t have the ltration capability you would need for some of these viruses.”

is is not a theoretical threat. More than 1,700 medical workers in China have become infected with coronavirus while on the job, Chinese ocials announced in mid-February. “is is concerning and consistent with what the CDC knows from our experience with SARS and MERS, where we saw that transmission can be amplied in health care settings if infection control practices are not carefully followed,” Dr. Nancy Mes sonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a media brieng last month.

However, according to Schwed helm, because the N95 is usually only worn when treating patients with rare infectious diseases like tuberculosis or measles, U.S. hospitals typically don’t stock a lot of them in supply closets. “If you haven’t done stockpiling of that item, you’re never going to have enough” to go around in case of a coronavirus outbreak, Schwedhelm said.

Unfortunately, Jarrett said, stockpil ing runs counter to the ecient way medical centers are run nowadays. Hospitals everywhere have become very dependent on global supplies of drugs and equipment, as well as supply orders that always come in the nick of time, he added.

CHINA CRUCIAL TO SUPPLY CHAIN

“Hospitals don’t have huge warehouses full of stockpiles like they used

For More Information For more information about coronavirus, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at www.cdc.gov.

to in the old days, because things can be shipped so quickly and communication is so quick,” Jarrett said.

is means a catastrophe in one part of the world can quickly put a pinch on medical supplies elsewhere.

For example, when Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico in 2017, one of the consequences for hospitals was a shortage of saline IV bags, Jarrett

arts & entertainment Culture

The Washington Diplomat | March 2020

diplomatic spouses

theater

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES Iceland’s Versatile ‘Mr. Mom’

From television sportscaster to humanitarian aid manager for landmine victims, Jon Oskar Solnes’s resume is a long one. But perhaps his most important role has been as a supportive husband to his wife, Icelandic Ambassador Bergdís Ellertsdóttir, and “Mr. Mom” to his four children PAGE 25

EDUCATION

Libraries may seem like a dusty relic from a time before the advent of Wikipedia and Google, but in Finland, libraries are still considered revolutionary, serving as communal hubs of learning and egalitarianism.PAGE 26 Mind-Blowing Libraries

photography • music • history • dining • film • events EARTH ART EARTH ON EDGE In “The Secret Life of Earth: Alive! Awake! (and Possibly Really Angry!),”a diverse group of artists celebrate nature and sound a clarion call about our persistent apathy and obstinance in the face of environmental calamity as icebergs melt and islands sink under rising seas. PAGE 24

THEATER Drowning in Politics

It’s hard to say anything new or interesting about Donald Trump, but playwright Anne Washburn manages to do it in “Shipwreck,” as a group of self-loathing liberals plumb the depths of racism, white rural angst and Trump’s Mussolini-like appeal.PAGE 29