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Borrowing a style used for herbal disasters, states send groups of lifeguards to serve in the event of an epidemic.
By Hannah Critchfield
HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina – The coronavirus entered the village of Cherry Springs silently and struck hard. Almost all citizens of the long-term care center would be infected.
They needed – temporarily – and the county responded: it sent a “strike team” composed of medical workers, lifeguards, clerics and others, in what fits with a new style of fighting Covid-19 in residential care centers.
Nurses and doctors from several hours came here to help citizens in poor health and reposition staff who had contracted the virus. They have put oxygen and intravenous infusions in position to send citizens with milder diseases to overcrowded hospitals.
Members of the county’s emergency control branch conducted immediate testing of all staff and residents. The Henderson County Rescue Brigade, a group of volunteer paramedics, erected decontamination tents to allow staff to safely remove protective gowns, masks and other appliances after shifts, and inform them of proper use and removal of clothing.
Chaplains and therapists came from a nearby hospice to provide emotional assistance to families and staff, who saw several citizens die in one day. A public relations worker was sent to touch the circle of family members in poor health and the inner stage.
Covid attack teams apply an emergency reaction style that has historically been used in herbal errors, such as hurricanes and wildfires, to combat epidemics in long-term care facilities. Comprised of about 8 to ten members of local emergency control services, fitness services, nonprofits, personal corporations and the National Guard, the groups are designed to bring more resources and body of workers to a crisis scene.
“Calling emergency control made sense because it was a disaster,” said Dr. Anna Hicks, a local geriatricist who helped coordinate the Cherry Springs attack team. “I felt like I was in an herbal mess.”
Covid-19 epidemics are spreading like wildfires in long-term care facilities, which place medically vulnerable citizens and personnel in small spaces. As a result, a number of developing states are treating them as one.
More than 40% of all coronavirus deaths in the United States are similar to those in nursing homes, according to a New York Times investigation.
“Desperate times, like a pandemic, demand another way of thinking,” said Dr. Timothy Chizmar, Maryland’s director of emergency medical services. “The concept is rooted in trauma situations, where it is simply not imaginable to take everyone off the scene; you rarely have to provide them with medical care.”
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