SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Coronavirus Nightmare Is Here

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

FYI -  Suffolk County reported the following confirmed cases and deaths due to COVID-19 through 2:30 p.m. on 3/25/2020

• 2260  confirmed cases  (up 380 from the 1,880 cases that were reported at 2:30 p.m. on March 24)
• 206 are hospitalized (up 43 from March 24), 67 of those are in the intensive care unit
• 20 deaths (up 3 from March 24)

By Karl Grossman

It’s a modern-day plague: the deaths, the quarantines, the states of emergency, the declaration of a worldwide pandemic, the lockdowns of cities and entire countries, the shutdown of schools and businesses, the mass layoffs, the courage of those doctors and nurses and other health care providers treating people with an infectious disease despite the danger to themselves, the fear we all have of getting infected, the “social distancing,” and on and on.

It’s a health disaster, a calamity on a global scale. 

“Our lives are all changing in ways that were unimaginable just a week ago,” said New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio as he issued an executive order last Sunday closing restaurants and bars, other than for take-out and delivery. All of New York State including Suffolk County, and the neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut, followed. “We are taking a series of actions that we never would have taken otherwise in an effort to save the lives of loved ones and our neighbors.” Meanwhile closings in the three states also include schools.

The strategy is to limit the transmission of the disease by restricting contact of people with other people thus reducing spread and “flattening the curve” of people needing medical care—so hospitals won’t be overwhelmed and treatment of the seriously ill can be managed. The percent of people with severe effects requiring hospital care is calculated at about 10%. 

But then there is the huge problem involving ventilators and respirators.

“U.S. hospitals bracing for a possible onslaught of coronavirus patients with pneumonia and other breathing difficulties could face a critical shortage of mechanical ventilators and health care workers to operate them,” the Associated Press reported last week.

“In the most severe cases,” AP explained, “the coronavirus damages healthy tissue in the lungs, making it hard for them to deliver oxygen to the blood. Pneumonia can develop, along with a more severe and potentially deadly condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome….Ventilators feed oxygen into the lungs of patients with severe respiratory problems through a tube inserted down the throat.”

“But the nation has only about 200,000 of the machines,” it said, citing a figure from the Society of Critical Care Medicine, which projects “that 960,000 coronavirus patients in the U.S. may need to be put on ventilators…during the outbreak.” 

President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act last week to ramp up manufacture of ventilators, but can hundreds of thousands of ventilators be produced quickly? The act, passed in 1950 at the start of the Korean War, empowers the federal government to require businesses to fulfill orders deemed necessary for the national defense. Also, as AP noted, will there be “enough…specialist nurses and doctors with…critical care training” to operate the machines? Further, Mr. Trump has not implemented use of the act as of this writing. 

As to effective face masks or respirators needed in order to protect nurses, doctors and other health care workers treating coronavirus patients, the New York State Nurses Association issued a statement last week on: “The Shortage of Respirators and Personal Protective Equipment For Health Care Personnel and First Responders.” The association said: “If the health care system and our hospitals are to continue to operate at the levels that we need, emergency action must be taken to protect nurses and other direct care staff from exposure and infection.”

It said the federal government “failed to maintain adequate stocks of respirators in the national reserves and further failed to take action when the outbreak arose in November-December to secure additional supplies of N95 respirators.” The N95 is considered the preferred face mask for hospital use. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website says the N95 protects “the wearer from airborne particles and from liquid contaminating the face” by blocking “at least 95 percent of very small test particles.”

The association recommends “Federal, state and local authorities must take immediate emergency action to secure and distribute stocks of N95 or higher-rated respirators…to our hospitals and other health care institutions in quantities necessary to protect staff from exposure and illness.” 

Meanwhile, it complained, the CDC and other federal agencies have issued directives that “substantially roll back the standards for protecting health workers.” That will “make things worse by exposing nurses and other workers to increased risk of exposure and infection…This will undermine the capacity to sustain operation of the health systems that our people will rely on as the virus spreads in coming weeks. If our nurses are in isolation or sick, they will not be there to provide patient care.” It called for restoring “the previously established infection control protocols and standards” as well as providing many more respirators. Last week, the Defense Production Act was also invoked by Mr. Trump to compel industry to produce more respirators.   

But this, too, has not been implemented. 

The world—including the U.S. and Suffolk—has been turned upside down by the coronavirus nightmare. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.