Harvard doc warns of gaps in care
The epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic is targeting the United States, and a lack of supplies, hospital space and “abysmal” federal government assistance with testing leaves the country climbing up a steep hill, a Harvard doctor said.
“We wasted two months. Two months is a long time to waste in a pandemic,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, adding, “Time is not on our side.”
He said officials knew of the outbreak in January and the time could have been used to stockpile medical supplies, prepare tests and increase bed capacity at hospitals around the country.
“I think we can still turn this around but now it’s a much steeper hill to climb than if we were to start two months ago,” Jha said.
The coronavirus case count in the United States surged past all other countries Thursday, topping 82,000 cases, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker. China and Italy remain close behind at 81,000 and 80,000 cases, respectively.
Jha addressed concerns about the gaps in the health care system in a Thursday morning online questionand-answer session with The Forum at the Harvard T.H. School of Public Health.
Americans will be living with impacts of the coronavirus for at least 12-18 months until a vaccine is made, Jha said, with the largest gaps in health care encompassing hospital beds, rural areas with less access to medical care, testing supplies and ventilators.
“Just using our current space as it stands today is not going to be enough,” Jha said of hospital beds, adding that coronavirus patients will need to go in a separate space from other patients.
Although the virus can spread faster in densely packed areas such as big cities, rural areas won’t be spared and lifesaving supplies like ventilators will be stretched thin across the country.
“We are going to ration care so some people will live and some people will die,” Jha said, taking questions from viewers online.
Testing capacity needs to ramp up two to three times what is being done now and a more robust public health workforce is also needed to conduct contact tracing.
“The federal government has really done an abysmal job on setting up the testing structure so states have really stepped up,” Jha said.
“I would love to see a federal effort on this, I would love to see the president step up on this and say we need a pause.”