As U.S. Braces for Coronavirus to Spread, Hospitals Worry About Shortages

As doctors in the U.S. have watched Italy’s health care system buckle under the sudden strain of the coronavirus, the magnitude of the problems that could be heading their way have begun to sink in. The crises Italian medical staff have been reportedly facing — overwhelming conditions, choosing which patients get treatment, and desperately working to expand their manpower — are all things that hospitals in the U.S. could encounter if the virus continues on its path, doctors say. “For me it flipped from, ‘This is a real concern, I wonder what’s going to happen’… to ‘Holy cow, I think we’re in trouble,’” says Laurel Fick, a residency director and an internal medicine physician at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital Indianapolis hospital, when she realized how grim the situation in Italy had grown. As of Monday, the U.S. had more than 4,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University, only a fraction of the approximately 28,000 cases in Italy. But the slow start of rolling out testing has made it impossible to know exactly how widespread the pandemic actually is in the U.S. What is clear is that the rate at which cases are increasing is similar to Italy’s trajectory. The Surgeon General said Monday that the U.S. is two weeks behind Italy. “When you look at the projections, there’s every chance that we could be Italy,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox New...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news