COVID Public Health Emergency Ends, But For ERs, There's Still No "New Normal"
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2023
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Today, ERs are still living with the consequences of the pandemic. They face staffing challenges, patients who delayed care and arrive sicker, and the lingering emotional strain.
We visit an emergency room at a hospital outside Baltimore to hear how this moment looks to the doctors and nurses who work there.
In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This message comes from NPR Sponsored, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, |
| 0:05.1 | who believe high-risk, high-reward research is the best way to make breakthroughs against cancer. |
| 0:09.9 | Learn more about Damon Runyon's Brave and Bold approach at DamonRunyon.org. |
| 0:21.7 | As historical milestones go, the official end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency last week |
| 0:27.9 | was pretty anti-climactic. There was no big presidential speech, no major demonstrations for |
| 0:34.8 | or against lifting the emergency. I mean, look, there is a note saying, |
| 0:39.2 | pandemics end with a whimper, not with a bang. That's White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Shah, |
| 0:45.4 | who spoke to NPR before the emergency expired. I don't know how to see it as a victory. |
| 0:50.0 | I see it as a transition, a necessary transition. A country can't be an emergency mode forever. |
| 0:56.7 | The end of the public health emergency had a definitive timestamp and came with some concrete |
| 1:01.3 | changes. The CDC will scale back COVID data tracking. The federal government will no longer |
| 1:06.7 | purchase COVID test or vaccines to offer to the public free of charge without insurance. |
| 1:12.2 | But as for the end of the pandemic, that's a lot fuzzier. Lots of Americans stopped worrying about |
| 1:18.3 | the risks of contracting COVID months ago, even years ago. But as Jaw pointed out, the virus |
| 1:24.2 | has not disappeared, and it still poses a very real threat to many people. |
| 1:28.8 | We are at about 150 to yesterday right now. I think that is a number that is too high, |
| 1:35.2 | and especially given that most of those deaths are preventable. |
| 1:40.2 | This is a strange moment for people like Semhara Fiseha, a med school administrator from Brooklyn. |
| 1:46.4 | She's been living with long COVID since she was infected two years ago. |
| 1:50.2 | Now there's a kind of like a stop button happening to it like, okay, we're done with this |
| 1:54.4 | public health emergency. But there are thousands of people that are still left dealing with the |
| 2:00.8 | impact of it. Or Vivian Chung, a pediatrician and research scientist from Bethesda, Maryland. |
... |
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