I posted the below on previous live thread; am reposting it here, slightly revised. How does the US plan to handle potential cases, if 2019-nCoV starts infecting thousands here, and not make health care facilities primary contagion points? (Negative air pressure rooms needed, etc.?)
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The problem with making a hospital the 1st option for someone who thinks they have 2019-nCoV is that (esp. as panic increases) everybody with a sniffle would then be heading to the hospital. Call ahead, well, maybe, if the call volume does not overwhelm the hospitals’ ability to handle the incoming calls well.
Here in the US, generally one cannot go to their PCP (GP) without an appointment, and that appointment usually takes a few days to get in. With a significant fatality rate already - oh yeah, that’s the ticket. /s
So, then the option is the ER or a walk-in clinic. Maybe some ER’s can prevent respiratory illnesses’ spread once you have a bed(?), but I suspect the bigger problem is contagion in the waiting room. (ER’s already scare me on this point, and that’s just for Flu, etc.) Walk-in clinics are likely generally worse.
That leaves us with??? I’d say call your PCP / GP office and ask for direction. If this gets bad, maybe screening facilities will be set up / designated.
Can any of our health care pros weigh in? This issue needs to be addressed now. I already consider it a major problem with the Flu.
Hope you hear from our health care pros.
You’re pushing the envelope though. I’m a VA patient and wouldn’t bother them unless a cold won’t go away.
I expect in the US patients won’t crowd the ER until things were very bad indeed.
I guess you’d do what the Chinese are doing - call in your symptoms, wait for a transport hazmat vehicle which will take you for testing (or will bring a test to you). Then you get to stay ‘isolated’ at home until a bed is found and off you go, just like in the movies. Hospitals will become no-go zones to protect the other sick and the maternity wards.
I put up a video a few days ago that cameo’d Loma Linda U Hospital; they’ve already got their isolation tent set up outside. Once Riverside Co has it’s first case, folks will be checked before the ER door and directed to the tent. A no-visiting policy for the main hospital may go in effect. Here, we can turn warehouses, schools, strip malls, office buildings, etc. into isolation units. No need to build a ‘hospital’ in 7 days. And no need for people to wait 8-10 days for a bed and treatment while they try to self-treat with vitamins and Chinese herbs like is happening in Hubai.
Our advantage is we have a slight head start over China who waited until Jan 9 or so to sequence the virus, Jan 23 to begin a quarantine and are still relying on the world to provide a vaccine. Meanwhile our vax research folks were forming teams, burning the midnight oil and sharing brainpower. And, we have live patients to work with now. We have no known cases of Corona prior to Jan. We’re only seeing recent cases, all, I believe from Wuhan, and all of which are said to have self-quarantined once they got here and were officially quarantined immediately upon symptoms. Unlike China whose folks wandered about while waiting on test results. (Personally, I’d be for a mandatory quarantine of anyone who flew in from Wuhan in the past month instead of relying on them trickling in)