People wear face masks in the Chinatown district of San Francisco on Feb. 26. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Around the country, city emergency officials are getting daily updates in calls with the CDC and coordinating their responses with nearby jurisdictions, including airports and shipping ports, which are seen as the most likely arrival point for the virus.
Harris County, which includes Houston, began monitoring the virus’s spread two months ago and has now moved into “preparedness” mode for a potential local outbreak, said Dr. Umair Shah, executive director for the Harris County Public Health department.
Unanswered Questions
It’s a monumental task, with the county’s 4.7 million people spread out over an area the size of Rhode Island. Shah is especially concerned about the large number of uninsured people in Texas -- 20% of Harris County, alone -- if the virus were to take hold. Questions they’re trying to answer include, “Where are people going to get their care? How are they going to get their care? How is it going to be paid for?”
Staffing is a rising problem in a number of cities. In Los Angeles, whose airport is one of the main sites for screening travelers from virus-stricken regions of the world, the county public health department is reassigning nurses and increasing overtime to handle outreach to more than 3,000 travelers under CDC guidelines, said Director Barbara Ferrer. She’s considering expanding their monitoring program to hand out information to travelers from newly hit areas, such as Italy, telling them how to self-monitor and when to seek help.
The agency is urging public venues to plan for possible postponement of big events if the area turns into a virus hotspot.
Another major worry is making sure local hospitals across the country know they need to build up enough supplies and safety gear to handle a major surge in patients -- an issue Shah intends to raise in a trip to Washington this week.
“Every hospital in our community should have the ability to isolate,” the doctor said. “They should be able to handle a novel Coronavirus confirmed case in their facility.”
In New York, Mayor Bill De Blasio reassured residents that while he sees arrival of the virus as “inevitable” in the city, officials are prepared, “so there's not a single reason for panic.”
New York’s hospitals have designated 1,200 beds for the treatment of virus patients, De Blasio said. And while they’ve obtained 1.5 million protective masks for healthcare workers, 300,000 more are needed. Federal officials could help by ordering manufacturers to step up mask production, and by doing more to enable local testing for the virus, the mayor said at a press conference.
“I would argue it is a matter of them being a little more creative, a little more flexible and to help us do the most we can do,” he said.