276 - A COVID-19 Update from a North Dakota Hospital
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last fall, the state of North Dakota had the highest COVID-19 rate per capita in the world and Sanford Medical Center in Fargo was nearly overwhelmed with COVID patients from as far away as Montana. Dr. Doug Griffin, Sanford Health vice president and medical officer, talks with Stephanie Desmon about how the hospital got through that crisis and what things are like today, his fears of another surge, and the hope that a robust vaccination plan will keep COVID-19 cases in check.
KEYWORDS: pandemic response; policy; health infrastructure
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.2 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith Rogers, producer of Public Health On Call. |
| 0:51.0 | Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Doug Griffin, Vice President and Medical Officer of |
| 0:56.3 | Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota, a state that last fall had the highest COVID-19 rate |
| 1:02.0 | per capita in the world. They discuss how the hospital survived that surge and how things |
| 1:08.1 | feel today. Let's listen. Dr. Doug Griffin, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:12.9 | Hey, you're welcome. Thank you for the time. So I wanted to talk to you about the COVID pandemic |
| 1:19.3 | and how it has sort of ebbed and flowed in your hospital since in the past year. First, |
| 1:26.7 | I'd like to start with, |
| 1:27.9 | North Dakota, as we know, |
| 1:29.2 | was hit very hard during the peak of COVID. |
| 1:32.0 | In November, I understand that North Dakota |
| 1:34.4 | had the highest COVID rate per capita in the world. |
| 1:37.5 | So what did that mean for your hospital? |
| 1:39.4 | What did things look like? |
| 1:40.7 | How did your staff feel? |
... |
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