Coronavirus in N.S. inevitable, health expert says

But societal panic greatest threat to health resources

It has never been considered a matter of if, but when.

With the coronavirus cropping up in Nova Scotia, it will be especially important not to panic and not to hoard basic essentials, said Mary Jane Hampton, who was Nova Scotia’s commissioner of health reform and is now a healthcare consultant.

“It has to be said that the anxiety that has been created by this is absolutely understandable,” Hampton told SaltWire Network. “What people need to do, though, is reassure themselves and reassure others that the panic is not really necessary.”

The great hope, she said, is that Nova Scotia will be “spared the brunt of the tidal tsunami of everyone getting sick at the same time, which is really the worst-case scenario for the health system.”

One of the gravest aspects of that worst-case scenario “is that the system will be swamped by a lot of people who aren’t very, very sick but are worried. And those people will take up the resources of health-care workers, some of whom may already be down on numbers because they are self-isolating.”

It’s important to follow proper screening guidelines and for people not to swamp emergency rooms or the 811 health line if they suspect they have coronavirus-like symptoms so that the health-care services are available for those who need them most, she said.

“So, that’s why it’s so important as we prepare for this, that everyone stays sensible, everyone remembers that for the most part the vast majority of people, if and when they get this virus, will not be terribly sick with it and that we need to protect the resources for those people who are very old and who have health conditions that will make them very vulnerable in the same way they would have been vulnerable for any other virus coming through.”

The group we should be most concerned about, she said, are the people who will become “very sick” but who can’t receive the help they need because the resources will have been taken up dealing with what are otherwise known as “the worried well.”

“So, it’s the panic response that’s actually a lot more dangerous to us then the virus itself,” she said.

Hampton’s hope is that if there is a positive message to come from all this, it’s that communities need to step up to think of others, as much as themselves. In other words, self-isolation and social distancing is about protecting others, not yourself.

It’s “think of the community and protect the people who are most vulnerable,” she said. “If we all come out the other side of this with better hand hygiene and more sense of how incredibly connected we are as communities and that we make it easier for people who aren’t well to stay home, that will actually have been a good thing. But the panic response over even things like commodities is, I think, a reflection of how dangerous the hysteria will become.

“And thinking practically, you don’t want to be the only person who has all the toilet paper and hand sanitizer. That’s not how it works,” she said. “Everybody needs to have what they need for everybody to stay safe. So, we need to step back, be sensible and feel confident, as I am, that the health system preparedness is, honestly, it’s in good shape.”

And, if there is any place to be in order to best “ride the wave of this pandemic you’d want to be right here,” she said.