Name: Hospitals forced to balance coronavirus patients with patients with other ailments
Uploaded: 2020-03-27T18:32:55.000Z
Duration: 4 min 48 s
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Dr Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC and longtime medical voice here at ABC, now runs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Let's see what an inspiring story that was.

What an inspiring story indeed would like to talk to you a bit about the tricky balancing act that hospitals are doing as they try to battle Corona virus while also dealing with other typical ailments.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's That's a major challenge when when there's a new pandemic, a new emerging infection, the other conditions that people have don't go away.

And so, just thinking about the challenges that air there for people with diabetes and heart disease and Andi cancer on Dhe, think about the particular challenges that lower income people have that people have in rural communities or Indian reservations.

They're gonna be really challenged to get the care they need during a time of crisis.

Here in New York, the nation's Corona virus epicenter.

Yesterday, Governor Cuomo was cautiously optimistic that the hospitalization was coming down thanks to our social distancing.

But then today we learned that in just one day, New York's hospitalization rate shot up by 40%.

And was yesterday's good news simply kind of false hope?

Well, I think it's a little early Thio either declare victory or defeat.

It's gonna take a long time for this to develop.

And the numbers are going to be very odd until we have sufficient testing out there to really be able to say what's going on in each community.

A pandemic is a series of local outbreaks occurring on different timelines.

So New York is seeing a lot more activity than other cities.

But until we see widespread testing, a lot of the numbers we say we're gonna be affected by the number of tests that are being done and rather than the true spread of the disease.

So how and when will we know if social distancing is really working?

Well, I think some of that does again come back to testing, being able to see that being able to get the word from from doctors and hospitals in terms of Do they have beds?

Can they meet the needs You without really good data and without us Hearing from the public health scientists who who really know how to model this and track it.

And really look at those numbers, it's gonna be hard to say.

But in any infectious disease outbreak, though, there's there's a lag which could make it even harder from the time you're exposed to the time you're diagnosed as a case that could be on the order of a weak.

And so you may be making progress, and it may take a good week for you to be able to say, Wow, what we're doing is having a big impact.

With hospital supplies running low today, the governor of New York announced that hospitals can split ventilators, use one machine for two patients.

Well, you know, it's not something you would want to do outside a situation of scarcity, but in a situation of scarcity like we're in now on, and you don't want to overstate scarcity, I was hearing another reports that there still are ventilators available but you can see where we're headed.

We're heading to a situation where there's tough decisions that are gonna need to be made.

And if it's possible to take one ventilator and have it support the breathing of more than one patient, that would be that would be terrific and might buy us some time until there's additional protective equipment.

Additional ventilators, a different additional material to go around.

There's a lot of confusion about what to do if you've recovered from Cove in 19 when you can come out of isolation.

For example, A B C's Kaylee Hartung had the virus and told us that she's been getting mixed messages.

And can you tell us about the new guidelines of the CDC just put out as faras when you, in theory, are no longer contagious?

Well, you know, some of the challenge here is that the science is still developing.

The hope is that after you've had an infection with Kobe 19 you can't get it again and you'll be immune.

But we won't know that we won't know how long protection lasts for quite some time.

Given that it's it's a new infection, it's important to hear to follow the guidelines of your of the CDC of local health departments so that you're not putting other people at risk prematurely, Dr Besser.

We thank you very much for your knowledge.

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