The coronavirus has landed, hard, in American emergency rooms. Hospitals in some areas are overwhelmed with critically ill Covid-19 patients, as the patient surge that epidemiologists warned us about is beginning.
Now it’s on doctors and nurses in emergency rooms across the US, who are also desperate for personal protective equipment like masks and gloves. “We think of the US as one of the most well-resourced places in the world when it comes to health care, but it just goes to show that when there’s sort of widespread panic, normal supplies can be depleted fairly quickly,” says Cedric Dark, an emergency room physician at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, which is preparing for a surge in patients.
“The other thing that we’ve been doing in hospitals—not only in Houston but across the country—is trying to figure out ways we can use one ventilator machine for more than one patient.” There are very few ventilators to go around, partly because our federal government has been so lackadaisical in preparing for this threat.
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