Seemorerocks: Coronavirus headlines from the USA

Sunday, 8 March 2020

Coronavirus headlines from the USA - 7 March, 2020

Coronavirus: Why The US Is

In Deep Trouble

"Patients have gone from showing no symptoms to being rushed to the hospital in an hour"

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared a state of emergency in New York on Saturday as the state’s number of confirmed cases rose, reaching 89 by the evening. Eleven are in New York City, the latest of which is an Uber driver.

The declaration of emergency will allow the state to speed up the purchasing of supplies and the hiring of workers to assist local health departments that have been handling the monitoring of thousands of quarantined patients, Mr. Cuomo said.

“Somebody has to go knock on their door, once a day,” he said during a midday briefing in the state Capitol. “This is labor intensive.”

The epicenter of the cases in New York continued to be just north of the city, in Westchester County, where the total reached 70. These cases were mostly, if not all, related to a cluster in Westchester that first came to the authorities’ attention after a New Rochelle resident, a 50-year-old lawyer, was confirmed as New York’s second coronavirus patient.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/world/coronavirus-news.html

The FDNY is pulling firefighters from answering medical calls that describe symptoms associated with coronavirus, the Daily News has learned.

A department order issued Friday says 911 calls for asthma attacks, fever, coughs and difficult breathing will be handled by the Emergency Medical Service.

Fire companies with certified first responder training that would normally accompany ambulances are being told to stand down, the order said.

“Effective immediately, the following call types will temporarily not receive a [certified first responder] response,” states paperwork obtained by The News.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-fdny-order-coronavirus-first-responders-20200307-yhxagu6yzzd6th23o4mqymma3q-story.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/07/amtrak-cancels-nonstop-acela-service-between-dc-nyc-due-to-coronavirus.html

More presumptive positive coronavirus cases were linked Friday to a Biogen meeting in Boston last week. Brigham and Women’s Hospital announced Friday afternoon that they were asked to help test people who were at the conference.

The Cambridge-based biotechnology company held a conference at the Marriott Long Wharf and at least eight people from that gathering have been infected, state and city health officials announced Friday. Of the eight, three are from Boston, one is from Wellesley and one other is from Norfolk County. Two are employees from Europe and the other is from Tennessee.

“As we heard yesterday, three travelers who visited Boston last week for the conference in the city, the Biogen conference, have been diagnosed with the coronavirus,” said Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. “That includes the Tennessee case announced by their health department yesterday that incorporated Massachusetts in that. None of these travelers are Boston residents. We now have new information that there have been three confirmed cases of coronavirus tracing back to the same Biogen meeting.”

Officials said the three Boston residents are two women and a man, all in their 40’s, and that two of them are showing symptoms of the virus.

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-biogen-meeting-boston-long-wharf-marriott-hotel-massachusetts/

Washington state officials are reportedly considering taking over a nursing home in Kirkland where at least 10 residents have died, possibly the first example in American history of a state agency nationalizing a nursing home.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/its-awful-situation-washington-moves-take-over-nursing-home-epicenter-outbreak

Hospitals are confronting the rising threat of the novel coronavirus in the US.
The spread of the coronavirus outbreak in the US could push the healthcare system to its limits.
In a February webinar presentation hosted by the American Hospital Association, an expert laid out “best guess” estimates about how many Americans could be impacted.
He projected that there could be as many as 96 million cases in the US, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 480,000 deaths associated with the novel coronavirus.