Trahan hears doctors’ concerns in town hall call
Doctors voiced concerns about the nation’s supply of protective equipment for hospital workers, as they discussed the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic in a telephone town hall meeting Friday with Rep. Lori Trahan, and said it could be over a year before all of this is behind us.
“We know that as long as we don’t have a vaccine the infection will be with us, and I suspect the vaccine is 12 to 18 months away,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health
Institute and a professor of global health at Harvard University. “I’ve been saying we should be prepared for a bumpy ride over the next 12 to 18 months.”
Jha was joined in the telephone town hall by Trahan, Lowell General Hospital and Circle Health President and CEO Jody White, and Dr. Dan Berlowitz, chairman of the Department of Public Health at Umass Lowell, and professor of public health at Boston University.
As Jha and Berlowitz fielded medical questions submitted by residents around the 3rd Congressional District, White handled questions about hospital preparations and needs. Trahan spoke about congressional action.
Trahan began the event with a personal anecdote about how the quicklyspreading virus has impacted even her own family.
Trahan said her 72-yearold mother often helps with her daughters, but that the epidemic has forced her mom to stay at home with her father, and to limit talks with her grandchildren to Facetime conversations.
“This is necessary to protect the health of our loved ones,” Trahan said.
Jha said that while he expects the virus to be a major part of public life for over a year, it may only be a few weeks before some of the most stringent restrictions can be pulled back.
“I suspect in a couple of weeks we’ll start relaxing some of these lockdowns and we’ll start letting people go back to work and letting kids go back to school,” Jha said. “But I don’t want to make any promises because it will depend on the data.”
“It’s hard for me to see major gatherings of 50,000 people happening anytime soon,” he added.
White said hospitals are taking stock of how many beds and intensive care unit beds are available, how many items like ventilators and protective masks are available, and working with the CDC to identify ways protective equipment can be used more efficiently or even reused in limited circumstances.
“We’re changing workflows so that once people are in PPE they can do multiple tasks and do multiple things so they don’t have to come out and waste equipment,” White said.
White
said everyone from Umass Lowell to construction firms in Boston and local businesses have donated protective gear to the hospital.
“Across the Commonwealth, people are standing up for health care,” White said. “PPE is going to be tight, and this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon, but we’re working hard on this as a hospital system and we’ve got a lot of good partners working with us.”