With Hospitalizations Low, NY Health Care Providers Say They’re Prepared, But Nervous Of Second COVID-19 Wave - Gothamist

At New York City Health and Hospitals, and medical centers around the New York metropolitan area, public health leaders and health care workers say they’re watching the trend lines, as intensive care units in other parts of the United States and the world fill up.

Laura Iavicoli, head of emergency preparedness for Health and Hospitals, the country’s largest municipal hospital system, explained there are four kinds of days: “blue skies, or normal,” “busier than normal,” “a little stretched,” and “extremely stretched.”.

Iavicoli said.

There is wide agreement that hospitals and care providers are in much better shape now than then in the spring, because there is much more knowledge about the disease and how to handle it; much larger stockpiles of personal protective equipment; and much, much more widespread testing.

“We’re scared because we’re afraid we’re going to have to go through this again,” said Michelle Gonzales, a critical care nurse at Montefiore Medical Center-Moses Campus in the Bronx, and a union representative for the New York State Nurses Association.

Iavicoli said each of her network’s facilities have already submitted requests, so that Health and Hospitals could place a preliminary order now.

New York State health authorities are requiring hospitals to stockpile a 90-day supply of PPE, and nursing homes, 60 days’ worth.

About 200,000 people a day across New York State are getting tested each day, roughly one-third of them in New York City.

Dave Chokshi, the city Health Commissioner.

He said mass testing works on two levels — by highlighting which areas are hot zones, so health workers can target residents with “hyper-local” messages about COVID-19 spread and encourage them to change their behavior; and also by allowing contact tracers to communicate with newly infected people individually.

Denis Nash, an epidemiologist who previously worked for the city Health Department and the CDC, said the city hasn’t successfully drilled down into how coronavirus actually spreads, because contact tracers aren’t asking people enough questions about their behaviors and possible exposures.

“During the summer and early fall, when things were slowly ramping up, there were missed opportunities to use contact tracing to talk to 80% or 90% of all newly diagnosed people, to understand what their risk factors were and what kinds of things did they were they exposed to that that could have potentially resulted in them getting the virus,” he said.

Chokshi said getting testing sites to these neighborhoods has been a priority — but a recent analysis suggests it’s not working as well as the city intended

“There's clearly a disparity in providing widespread testing across New York City,” Wil Lieberman-Cribbin, a graduate student and environmental health researcher at Columbia University, said

More testing in those areas would pick up cases sooner, before people develop symptoms

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