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Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/...ed-for-triage/
If Covid-19 gets bad, triage will be needed. Are we ready for that?
By Matthew K. Wynia and John L. Hick
March 10, 2020
The emergence of a new infectious disease that rapidly spreads around the world, like Covid-19, makes disaster planning experts move into overdrive. Lessons learned over the last decade can help cope with the spread of the novel coronavirus.
In the spring of 2009, a new type of flu virus, called H1N1, was detected in the United States. It spread across the U.S and to other countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that, in the U.S. alone, between April 2009 and April 2010 H1N1 sickened more than 60 million people, caused 275,000 hospitalizations, and killed more than 12,000 people.
In the midst of a summer lull in H1N1 cases, the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) convened a committee to come up with guidance for clinicians and hospital administrators who might need to make difficult choices during this — and future — overwhelming pandemics.
Choices like these: If there aren’t enough masks or ventilation machines available, what is an ethically defensible way to allocate them? Might it be ethically acceptable to remove one patient from a ventilator so another could use it? Should clinicians who are forced to make such choices be legally protected? And who should get priority access to vaccines if they become available?...
If Covid-19 gets bad, triage will be needed. Are we ready for that?
By Matthew K. Wynia and John L. Hick
March 10, 2020
The emergence of a new infectious disease that rapidly spreads around the world, like Covid-19, makes disaster planning experts move into overdrive. Lessons learned over the last decade can help cope with the spread of the novel coronavirus.
In the spring of 2009, a new type of flu virus, called H1N1, was detected in the United States. It spread across the U.S and to other countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that, in the U.S. alone, between April 2009 and April 2010 H1N1 sickened more than 60 million people, caused 275,000 hospitalizations, and killed more than 12,000 people.
In the midst of a summer lull in H1N1 cases, the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) convened a committee to come up with guidance for clinicians and hospital administrators who might need to make difficult choices during this — and future — overwhelming pandemics.
Choices like these: If there aren’t enough masks or ventilation machines available, what is an ethically defensible way to allocate them? Might it be ethically acceptable to remove one patient from a ventilator so another could use it? Should clinicians who are forced to make such choices be legally protected? And who should get priority access to vaccines if they become available?...