Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Nearly 9,000 U.S. Workers Have Contracted Coronavirus, Though CDC Says More Unreported Cases Are Likely
The New York Times: C.D.C. Says More Than 9,000 Health Care Workers Have Contracted Coronavirus
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday that 9,282 health care professionals had contracted the coronavirus in the United States as of April 9 and that 27 had died from it. The agency cautioned that the numbers were most likely higher than reported because of inconsistencies in data-gathering and the lack of information during the outbreak. “This is likely an underestimation,” the report said, because the occupational status of patients was available for only 16 percent of the cases in the United States reported to the C.D.C. (Waldstein, 4/14)
The Wall Street Journal: New Coronavirus Has Infected More Than 9,000 U.S. Health-Care Workers
The figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offer the first nationwide snapshot of how the Covid-19 pandemic is hitting front-line caretakers. Twenty-seven health-care providers have died from the disease caused by the virus, and the median age of those caretakers infected was 42 years old, the CDC found. The agency said the survey, conducted from Feb. 12 to April 9, likely understates the presence of the virus among clinicians. (Adamy, 4/14)
Kaiser Health News: True Toll Of COVID-19 On U.S. Health Care Workers Unknown
The number of health care workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus is likely far higher than the reported tally of 9,200, and U.S. officials say they have no comprehensive way to count those who lose their lives trying to save others. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the infection tally Tuesday and said 27 health worker deaths have been recorded, based on a small number of test-result reports. Officials stressed that the count was drawn from just 16% of the nation’s COVID-19 cases, so the true numbers of health care infections and deaths are certainly far higher. (Jewett and Szabo, 4/15)
Kaiser Health News/The Guardian: Lost On The Frontline
America’s health care workers are dying. In some states, medical staff account for as many as 20% of known coronavirus cases. They tend to patients in hospitals, treating them, serving them food and cleaning their rooms. Others at risk work in nursing homes or are employed as home health aides. Some of them do not survive the encounter. Many hospitals are overwhelmed and some workers lack protective equipment or suffer from underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable to the highly infectious virus. (Bailey, Gee, Jewett, Renwick and Varney, 4/15)
The New York Times: The Last Words Of A N.Y. Health Care Worker Who Died Of Coronavirus
Lying in a hospital bed last month, Madhvi Aya understood what was happening to her. She had been a doctor in India, then trained to become a physician assistant after she immigrated to the United States. She had worked for a dozen years at Woodhull Medical Center, a public hospital in Brooklyn, where she could see the coronavirus tearing a merciless path through the city. (Rothfeld, Drucker and Rashbaum, 4/15)
And in other news from the front lines—
The Wall Street Journal: After Fighting Coronavirus, New York’s Health-Care Workers Sleep Away From Home
Hundreds of health-care workers around New York have made alternate living arrangements as they battle the coronavirus crisis, and officials are starting programs that can keep them from potentially infecting loved ones at home. As the outbreak here fills hospitals, more hotels are opening their doors—in limited capacity and with reduced or zero cost—to doctors, nurses and paramedics who are treating patients. (Vielkind, 4/14)
The Wall Street Journal: Four Dispatches From The Pandemic’s Front Lines
A nurse holds a patient’s hand, seeing fear in his eyes. A two-doctor couple struggles to care for twin girls. As an emergency-room physician walks home alone after a long night, the only sound is the piercing wail of ambulance sirens, one after another. These are some of the medical workers on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic, exposed to the virus that has ravaged the world while balancing their personal lives with a public mission. (Reddy, 4/14)
ProPublica: She Came to New York to Help Fight COVID. She Walked Into a “War Movie.”
Sarah Higgins is a nurse practitioner who has worked for years at a dermatology practice in Dallas. Because the practice performed elective procedures — skin rejuvenation, laser tattoo removal — it was suspended amid the COVID-19 crisis. Higgins, 34, soon raised her hand to come to New York City as a reinforcement for an overwhelmed health care workforce. She arrived in late March and was assigned to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, one of the hardest-hit medical centers in one of the city’s hardest-hit boroughs. (4/14)
The Wall Street Journal: Detroit Kidney Doctor Wouldn’t Abandon Patients Amid Coronavirus
In the Covid-19 era, Olaf Kroneman’s masked face might be the last familiar sight one of his kidney patients with coronavirus sees. Dr. Kroneman is on staff at four hospitals in the Detroit area, a region hard-hit by the pandemic. No family visits are allowed for patients with the virus, and staff contact with those stricken is kept to a minimum to protect doctors, nurses and other medical personnel. (Michaud, 4/15)
The Washington Post: Nationals’ Ryan Zimmerman Starts Fund For Health-Care Workers With $100K Gift
On the afternoon of Easter Sunday, a team of health-care professionals working in the intensive care unit at Inova Fairfax Hospital gathered together, faces hidden behind masks. A hospital official asked them to look up at a screen, where she connected them via video conference software to a familiar face. “Happy Easter, everybody!” said Ryan Zimmerman, seated at home next to his wife, Heather. (Svrluga, 4/14)
San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Health Care Workers Want More Transparency About On-The-Job Coronavirus Exposure
A patient who spent the night in San Francisco General Hospital’s psychiatric emergency unit spiked a fever in the morning. Only then did his nurses learn that he’d come from one of the city’s largest homeless shelters, where dozens of residents tested positive for the coronavirus. After hospital staff frantically moved the patient to an isolation unit on Saturday, it took 12 hours to confirm he was infected. His nurses learned about the diagnosis from the man’s doctors, who called to let them know. And they were scared. (Moench, 4.15)
WBUR: Public Health Service Poised To Create A Ready Reserve To Fight The Coronavirus
The Public Health Service has a commissioned officer corps of about 6,300 doctors, nurses and other professionals. Thousands of them deployed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. They went to Liberia during the Ebola outbreak in 2014. Now, about 1,800 corps members are focused on the coronavirus in the United States. More are needed, but these doctors and nurses all have day jobs. (Lawrence, 4/15)
