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New Jersey Partly Prepared -- interview

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  • New Jersey Partly Prepared -- interview

    NJ only partly prepared for expected flu pandemic
    By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
    Published: Saturday, December 16, 2006

    https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...-6883366c.html


    TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - If New Jersey is hit by an anticipated influenza pandemic, more than 8,100 residents will die - and that's a conservative estimate from the state health department.
    Whether the pandemic is due to a flu strain mutated from birds or a human super flu, sick and panicked people will descend on hospitals for help: an estimated 250,000 of them over just a two-month wave. Some 40,000 patients would require ICU beds and 20,000 would need a ventilator, many times more than now available.

    Could the state's hospitals, health department and emergency management agencies handle such a crisis?

    "In a really bad pandemic, our system would be overwhelmed, quite frankly," said Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, deputy health commissioner and state epidemiologist.

    Richard Canas, director of the state Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, has a starker view: In a severe pandemic, state agencies simply will not be able to keep everything running normally.




    "You're going to be staying home for one year. There will be no school, there will be no work," he said. "All we'll be doing is trying to keep ourselves alive."
    That's despite New Jersey's government, public health system and many businesses having spent several years preparing for the worst:

    -Government officials and other groups have been running tabletop disaster drills and making contingency plans for running essential services.

    -Hospitals have been stockpiling surgical gloves and gowns, respirators and flu medicine, plus setting up more "negative-pressure rooms" to isolate infectious patients.

    -At least five hospitals have run drills. For example, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton had "sick volunteers" simulate a crush of 800 flu patients; they had to be triaged and treated by the ER staff while others evacuated four wings to create a new isolation ward.

    -Businesses are caching their own supplies and lining up volunteers and equipment to help out. A public-private partnership called New Jersey Business Force that includes about three dozen big corporations last May ran its own tabletop exercise under the scenario that terrorists unleashed an aerosolized bacteria causing the plague at Newark-area transportation hubs.

    -The state agriculture department has beefed up testing for avian influenza, or bird flu, at the state's 35 live bird markets, poultry distributors and other sites, and has added a section on avian influenza to its Web site.

    -The New Jersey Food Council, representing about 1,200 food retailers, distributors and manufacturers, hosted a tabletop bird flu exercise in October and is working with state agencies to ensure a continuous food supply. Council members will work together if there is a shortage of food, or of clerks or drivers due to illness, to keep a food store open in every area, even if it's the competition.

    -Bloomfield and other towns have done mass-vaccination drills, although a vaccine against the flu strain circulating won't be available until months into an epidemic.

    -Last year, the state enacted a law spelling out who's in charge and what powers they have in a public health emergency.

    -The state has set up a "211" phone system with call centers where trained staff can give information during an emergency, to relieve the 911 system, and upgraded its labs to be able to identify influenza strains such as the deadly H5N1 that has triggered so many fears.

    "Of what we could do, 75 to 80 percent is done," Dr. Fred Jacobs said of the preparations by the Department of Health and Senior Services, which he heads. "But without a vaccine, we're playing catch-up," he said.

    His department is polishing the fourth version of its flu pandemic plan, which covers everything from command-and-control functions to providing counseling for the public and responders helping them.

    Under the "Get Flu Ready, New Jersey" campaign this fall, the department set up an information Web site and ran public-service ads on video screens at supermarket checkouts, urging people to stockpile food and bottled water, practice good hygiene and stay home if sick.

    It has sent local health departments, schools and universities detailed pandemic planning checklists. Fact sheets and fill-in-the-blank press releases are ready for health officials statewide to update the public and give instructions.

    Hospitals are expected to have a surge capacity of 13,319 beds, meaning that within 24 hours they can free up that many beds by canceling elective surgeries and diagnostic procedures, sending home anyone well enough and transferring others to nursing homes or other facilities.

    The health department has given $6.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to local and county health agencies to improve their preparedness. The department is spending another $2.4 million from the CDC on its own stockpile of flu supplies and on rapid flu test kits to go to hospitals, nursing homes and "sentinel physicians" - doctors who notify the health department weekly of all flu cases, as do all hospitals and many nursing homes and schools.

    From its own funds, the department plans to spend $11 million to increase its antiviral medicine stockpile from the current 18,500 treatment courses of Tamiflu to an eventual 945,000, but none is expected before next spring. With the state's share of the federal stockpile, eventually there would be enough to cover a quarter of New Jersey's population.

    No one's decided yet how to ration the scarce supply of Tamiflu: Should it only go to sick people or, since it can prevent as well as treat infection, should health workers, relatives of sick people, emergency responders or truck drivers get it prophylactically?

    The health department also is grappling with how to maintain essential services such as Meals on Wheels for the most vulnerable people.

    And most of the tabletop exercises and hospital drills found inadequate communication, both within organizations and between various state agencies and other groups.

    "It's probably the single most important thing we need to tighten up on," said Bresnitz, the deputy health commissioner.

    Just last week, a report released by The Trust for America's Health ranked New Jersey among the four worst states in preparedness for a flu pandemic or other health emergency. The Garden State only met four of the health policy group's 10 preparedness criteria.

    That's despite the state getting a thunderous wake-up call from the 2001 anthrax attacks and the Sept. 11 airliner hijackings that year, which killed 693 New Jersey residents.

    Nearly everyone cites a common problem.

    "There's not enough money," said Canas, the Homeland Security chief.

    He said the money given to states by the federal government is not sufficient for all the supplies and training needed to prepare state workers, 81 acute-care hospitals and 168,000 paramedics, police officers and other emergency responders. New Jersey has received only about $9 million from the federal government.

    New Jersey hospitals already are struggling financially and don't have the money for all the necessary preparations, said Valerie Sellers, senior vice president for health planning and research at the New Jersey Hospital Association.

    Still, the trade group has set up nine committees to help its members address anticipated problems. Those include keeping adequate staff on duty if workers get sick, making sure supply chains don't break down and arranging for insurers and the government to keep paying their bills so the hospitals can meet payroll and other expenses.

    "We have to maintain the financial viability of hospitals, or you're going to see closures left and right," Sellers said.
    Last edited by Harpsong; December 16, 2006, 02:23 PM.
    "I've no time to plead and pine. I've no time to wheedle. Kiss me quick and then I'm gone. POP! Goes the Weasel."

  • #2
    Re: New Jersey Partly Prepared -- interview

    Thanks Harpsong! Do you have the link?

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: New Jersey Partly Prepared -- interview



      Thank you, Florida1
      "I've no time to plead and pine. I've no time to wheedle. Kiss me quick and then I'm gone. POP! Goes the Weasel."

      Comment


      • #4
        State would be overwhelmed by flu pandemic



        State would be overwhelmed by flu pandemic

        Saturday, December 16, 2006

        If New Jersey is hit by an anticipated influenza pandemic, more than 8,100 residents will die -- and that's a conservative estimate from the state health department.

        Whether the pandemic is due to a flu strain mutated from birds or a human super flu, sick and panicked people will descend on hospitals for help: an estimated 250,000 of them over a two-month wave. Some 40,000 patients would require ICU beds and 20,000 would need a ventilator, many times more than now available.

        Could the state's hospitals, health department and emergency management agencies handle such a crisis?

        "In a really bad pandemic, our system would be overwhelmed, quite frankly," said Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, deputy health commissioner and state epidemiologist.

        Richard Canas, director of the state Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, has a starker view: In a severe pandemic, state agencies simply will not be able to keep everything running normally.

        "You're going to be staying home for one year. There will be no school, there will be no work," he said. "All we'll be doing is trying to keep ourselves alive."

        That's despite New Jersey's government, public health system and many businesses having spent several years preparing for the worst:

        - Government officials and other groups have been running tabletop disaster drills and making contingency plans for running essential services.

        - Hospitals have been stockpiling surgical gloves and gowns, respirators and flu medicine, plus setting up more "negative-pressure rooms" to isolate infectious patients.

        - At least five hospitals have run drills. For example, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Hamilton had "sick volunteers" simulate a crush of 800 flu patients; they had to be triaged and treated by the ER staff while others evacuated four wings to create a new isolation ward.

        - Businesses are caching their own supplies and lining up volunteers and equipment to help out. A public-private partnership called New Jersey Business Force that includes about three dozen big corporations last May ran its own tabletop exercise under the scenario that terrorists unleashed an aerosolized bacteria causing the plague at Newark-area transportation hubs.

        - The state agriculture department has beefed up testing for avian influenza, or bird flu, at the state's 35 live bird markets, poultry distributors and other sites, and has added a section on avian influenza to its Web site.

        - The New Jersey Food Council, representing about 1,200 food retailers, distributors and manufacturers, hosted a tabletop bird flu exercise in October and is working with state agencies to ensure a continuous food supply. Council members will work together if there is a shortage of food, or of clerks or drivers due to illness, to keep a food store open in every area, even if it's the competition.

        - Bloomfield and other towns have done mass-vaccination drills, although a vaccine against the flu strain circulating won't be available until months into an epidemic.

        - Last year, the state enacted a law spelling out who's in charge and what powers they have in a public health emergency.

        - The state has set up a "2-1-1" phone system with call centers where trained staff can give information during an emergency, to relieve the 9-1-1 system, and upgraded its labs to be able to identify influenza strains such as the deadly H5N1 that has triggered so many fears.


        "Of what we could do, 75 to 80 percent is done," Dr. Fred Jacobs said of the preparations by the Department of Health and Senior Services, which he heads. "But without a vaccine, we're playing catch-up," he said.

        His department is polishing the fourth version of its flu pandemic plan, which covers everything from command-and-control functions to providing counseling for the public and responders helping them.

        Under the "Get Flu Ready, New Jersey" campaign this fall, the department set up an information Web site and ran public-service ads on video screens at supermarket checkouts, urging people to stockpile food and bottled water, practice good hygiene and stay home if sick.

        It has sent local health departments, schools and universities detailed pandemic planning checklists. Fact sheets and fill-in-the-blank press releases are ready for health officials statewide to update the public and give instructions.

        Hospitals are expected to have a surge capacity of 13,319 beds, meaning that within 24 hours they can free up that many beds by canceling elective surgeries and diagnostic procedures, sending home anyone well enough and transferring others to nursing homes or other facilities.

        The health department has given $6.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to local and county health agencies to improve their preparedness. The department is spending another $2.4 million from the CDC on its own stockpile of flu supplies and on rapid flu test kits to go to hospitals, nursing homes and "sentinel physicians" -- doctors who notify the health department weekly of all flu cases, as do all hospitals and many nursing homes and schools.

        From its own funds, the department plans to spend $11 million to increase its antiviral medicine stockpile from the current 18,500 treatment courses of Tamiflu to an eventual 945,000, but none is expected before next spring. With the state's share of the federal stockpile, eventually there would be enough to cover a quarter of New Jersey's population.

        No one's decided yet how to ration the scarce supply of Tamiflu: Should it only go to sick people or, since it can prevent as well as treat infection, should health workers, relatives of sick people, emergency responders or truck drivers get it prophylactically?

        The health department also is grappling with how to maintain essential services such as Meals on Wheels for the most vulnerable people.

        And most of the tabletop exercises and hospital drills found inadequate communication, both within organizations and between various state agencies and other groups.

        "It's probably the single most important thing we need to tighten up on," said Bresnitz, the deputy health commissioner.

        Last week, a report released by The Trust for America's Health ranked New Jersey among the four worst states in preparedness for a flu pandemic or other health emergency. The Garden State only met four of the health policy group's 10 preparedness criteria.

        That's despite the state getting a thunderous wake-up call from the 2001 anthrax attacks and the Sept. 11 airliner hijackings that year, which killed 693 New Jersey residents.

        Nearly everyone cites a common problem.

        "There's not enough money," said Canas, the Homeland Security chief.

        He said the money given to states by the federal government is not sufficient for all the supplies and training needed to prepare state workers, 81 acute-care hospitals and 168,000 paramedics, police officers and other emergency responders. New Jersey has received only about $9 million from the federal government.

        New Jersey hospitals already are struggling financially and don't have the money for all the necessary preparations, said Valerie Sellers, senior vice president for health planning and research at the New Jersey Hospital Association.

        Still, the trade group has set up nine committees to help its members address anticipated problems. Those include keeping adequate staff on duty if workers get sick, making sure supply chains don't break down and arranging for insurers and the government to keep paying their bills so the hospitals can meet payroll and other expenses.

        "We have to maintain the financial viability of hospitals, or you're going to see closures left and right," Sellers said.

        ON THE WEB
        N.J .health department flu preparedness site: www.njflupandemic.gov

        CDC pandemic flu site:
        CDC’s pandemic preparedness efforts include ongoing surveillance of human and animal influenza viruses, risk assessments of influenza viruses with pandemic potential.

        Comment

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