The Five Covid-19 Policy Priorities Congress Should Adopt
A daily update from Andy Slavitt, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Pulled from my daily COVID-19 updates on Twitter.
Today I’ll share more about the crises of today (masks & beds), the crises of tomorrow (ventilators), clinical protocols, what Congress needs to do, and what others are doing to help us sustain #StayHome.
Hospital masks:
As I said last week doctors and nurses on the frontlines are the biggest need. Trump seemed to confirm getting factories moving to make masks. Everyone who can, should. We will likely need 1 billion masks.
In the meantime, we are making plans to launch a National N95 mask coordination site for people who want to make, donate, or need masks. A great Silicon Valley team is working on it. More soon on that. We need to put every donation or contribution towards helping a front line worker. If any dentists, painters, contractors, plastic surgeons, etc. have any protective gear — N-95 masks or other, gloves, thermometers — sitting around, bring them to your local hospitals. In any number. All you have.
Hospital beds and ventilators:
We will be where Italy was with hospital capacity (we are 10–14 days behind them). We will get overrun. I will be blunt. I’ve been speaking to governors and the Administration. The urgency in the states is much much higher than the urgency at the fed level. I’m not trying to criticize for its own sake. They need to amp it up. I expect within days we will see a new round of regulations removed on hospitals allowing them to use/get more capacity. We have to move away from being weeks behind to getting weeks ahead of this.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said it today: Hospital beds are no good without more ventilators. A worldwide shortage means we need to make more. And we need to #StayHome and not infect people to spare people’s lives.
People have long lives ahead of themselves if we give them the chance. A 25 year old colleague was hospitalized in NY today with COVID-19. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, it likely will. I am of course counting on him getting great care and I’m grateful to all who help him. Two other colleagues have just come down with fevers. If they come in to the same hospital a week from now, there could be 4x the number of people there. I worry even more about them.
Clinical protocols:
Spoke to a medical journal. We talked about organizing a library of clinical protocols and videos on how patients should best be managed at each stage, ways to stay safe, reducing infections, deal with overcrowding, where clinical trials are, and more.
What Congress needs to do:
Today, we at @USofCare released a 5 point proposal for Congress on what needs to be done:
Here are the five priority areas:
- Provide a significant, sustained commitment to support front-line medical workers, and to treat them as a protected class for the duration of the declaration of the federal and state emergencies.
- Allow Americans the financial wherewithal to withstand extended isolation and job loss; the ability to isolate will have a direct impact on the expected death toll.
- Support the health care costs of Americans who are afflicted with COVID-19 and impacted by the economic downturn; by extension, provide financial support for states, hospitals, community health centers, and other health care institutions.
- Protect the most vulnerable Americans from COVID-19: people with underlying chronic medical conditions, those living in close quarters or otherwise unable to practice social distancing, and seniors–especially those in nursing homes.
- Put the full resources of the entire nation to their maximum use to respond to pressing medical and public health infrastructure needs.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposal for Coronavirus income relief excludes low-income people. No unemployment insurance, no SNAP, no state assistance, no housing assistance, no health coverage.
Sadly, this is the first volley out of Senate Republicans. They are going to need to engage more deeply in the reality of the challenge people are facing & come up with something better.
Finally, while everyone fights today’s battles and we push Congress to do the right thing (in the active use of the word PUSH), a number of people reached out to help make the new normal a good new normal: chefs, writers, musicians, good people. And all them them did it while staying home.
