COVID-19, March 2020, EM cases, let's go.

Since we had to maintain social distancing, I couldn't do the usual roundtable discussions

at EMC Studios, so instead I recorded a few experts separately who have all been on the podcast

before.

One of the great leaders in emergency medicine in Canada, Howard Ovens, my mentor, on his

general thoughts on getting through this crisis,

ID doc, an amazing educator, Andrew Morris on the clinical aspects of COVID, Daniel Collick,

one of Canada's leading experts on disaster medicine on surge capacity during this outbreak,

Lori Mazurik on Protected Code Blue, PPE, and Protecting Ourselves, and George Kovacs on airway considerations.

We're working on an epidemiologist for prediction models and prevention of spread

strategies as well. Let's jump right in with a short segment by Dr. Howard Ovens,

then get into the clinical stuff.

Well, thanks very much, Anton, for putting this together and for giving me an opportunity to participate.

In 2003, I was a director of an emergency department in Toronto that was very heavily involved in the SARS outbreak of SARS-1.

And my department was in lockdown at various times, and we admitted over 20 confirmed

cases of SARS. And there was no transmission of illness to any of our staff. But it was a very

trying time. It's very fresh in my memory. It's even fresher right now because of how much the

current time is evocative of that experience. And I think there's some things I learned about

getting your department through that would be useful for your listeners. So the first thing is

that communication amongst your group so that you're all on the same wavelength, share the same information, share the same anxieties and concerns is crucial.

So you have to come to some decision about how you're going to do that.

It could be by email.

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