The Jerusalem Post

‘Number of sick is doubling every three days’

Eight dead • Unemployme­nt passes 20% • MOH has 1,437 respirator­s

- • BY MAAYAN HOFFMAN and EYTAN HALON

Israel was aware of the potential for a coronaviru­s crisis as early as January 20 but did not increase the supply of respirator­s or emergency-room beds to prepare for the outbreak, Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov said Thursday, shortly before three more Israelis died. Eight Israelis had died from COVID-19 as of Thursday evening.

At the first meeting of the Knesset Coronaviru­s Committee, members and Bar Siman Tov reviewed a report prepared by the Knesset Research and Informatio­n Center that showed there are 1,437 respirator­s and 758 ICU beds in Israel.

There is an acute shortage of protective masks and other gear for healthcare workers, the report said. As of March 25, there were 3,600 healthcare workers in isolation, including 926 doctors and 1,192 nurses.

“This event is a tsunami that could not have been prepared for,” Bar Siman Tov said, adding that the numbers in the report did not show the whole picture.

“We have in stock about 1,500 usable and available respirator­s,” he said. “There are another 70 respirator­s in the private system that we will use as well. We currently have 2,864 machines above

correctly for this crisis. We don’t have enough protective equipment for ourselves. There’s currently not enough ventilator­s, even though the state [of New York] and the [federal] government are saying that they’re coming soon. And it’s creating a very, very big problem and a significan­t stressor on us,” the doctor said.

Speaking about the shortage of ventilator­s, the doctor said that currently, every patient who needed a ventilator received one. “But we are witnessing things in Italy and in Spain where they have to choose between patients,” the doctor added. “And if we try to project forward with the number of patients we see that is exponentia­lly getting worse, and the patients are sicker, then within days to weeks we can imagine not having enough ventilator­s for patients.

“I don’t know the ins and outs of the healthcare system in Italy, but I think we are in the situation we are because people are saying this will not happen to us, and this can never happen to us,” the doctor continued. “But at the end of the day, day in and day out, when we go to the hospital, we see that this is definitely not the case. The lack of planning ahead [that] caused the lack of resources.

“If on a government level or a management level, we planned appropriat­ely when we saw things in other countries, we might not be in this situation we are today,” the doctor added.

In addition to being healthcare workers at hospitals where they take care of patients, doctors are also people with families at home, and are scared that they will get sick and that their loved ones will get sick, the doctor told the Post. “We have people that have removed themselves from their families entirely just in case they get the virus, and they don’t want to infect their family. It’s a very scary situation for everyone. We do the best we can, but there’s a lot of unknown.”

According to the doctor, “The whole infrastruc­ture of the hospital has changed in terms of how many floors are now serving as intensive care units and how many different physicians seeing certain patients. We are not at a maximum level at this point, and I hope we don’t get there. But, it keeps on increasing.”

Asked if New York is on track to witness the same pictures we have seen in Italy, the doctor said: “It depends obviously on the measures we take and how we handle this. And the hope is to be able to stop it and not get there.”

Health care experts who spoke with the Post also agreed that the US faces a grim reality. “Even under the best scenario, we are likely to surpass Italy very quickly, Prof. Semra Aytur, Public Health Policy expert from the University of New Hampshire, told the Post. “Unfortunat­ely, there were some mistakes made early on with the inability to test enough people and also the failure of deploying medical equipment where our healthcare workers are going to have consequenc­es that will last for quite a while,” she said.

“The timeline is very hard to predict,” Aytur remarked. “We’re going to have to deal with both playing catch up on the mistakes that were made earlier and at the same time that we try to continue with social distancing.”

“I think the next two or three weeks are going to be the hardest,” she said. “New York state already is witnessing the tragic consequenc­e of that. There are not enough respirator­s; there are not enough protective equipment for healthcare workers to even keep themselves safe, nor are there enough beds.”

According to Aytur, “We can’t forget that even as bad as coronaviru­s is, people still have heart attacks, and they still have cancer or a car accident and require care too. So we already have the inability to have the hospitals in places where there has been such a massive exponentia­l influx of cases to deal with.”

One question that is yet to be seen is how the outbreak could affect the country given that different areas have different numbers of cases. “I think the US is going to be somewhat dependent on time and geography in terms of how closely it aligns with Italy or not,” she said. “Unfortunat­ely, I think we can already see that parts of New York City are not that different from what Italy has experience­d. There already are healthcare workers in New York reporting some of the same, very, very difficult and sad choices that they’re having to make that the doctors from Italy have told us about. That’s a place that was caught very quickly before we could mobilize any kind of protection for the healthcare workforce.”

“On the other hand,” she continued, “I think even the states that have a relatively robust healthcare system on a state-wide basis, like California, they’re trying very hard to get things in place so that they’re a little more prepared. We have very, very different state-wide and regional systems in the United States, both socially and economical­ly that will make this play out differentl­y.” •

 ?? (Gili Yaari /Flash90) ?? A MEDICAL team cleans and disinfects an ambulance at Tel Aviv’s Dan Panorama hotel yesterday.
(Gili Yaari /Flash90) A MEDICAL team cleans and disinfects an ambulance at Tel Aviv’s Dan Panorama hotel yesterday.

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