What the U.S. Needs to Do — Right Now — to Fight Coronavirus

A 30-day plan to contain the outbreak and treat the infected.

by

and

Devabhaktuni Srikrishna

by

and

Devabhaktuni Srikrishna

March 11, 2020

Iryna Veklich/Getty Images

Summary.

The U.S. needs to go on a de facto wartime footing to prevent the Covid-19 epidemic from spiraling out of control. To identify the infected, the country needs to vastly expand testing, which will involve creating drop-in or drive-through testing sites in every town, suburb, and borough. Telehealth response centers with 24/7 call-in lines staffed by nurses should be established within each local public health department. People with concerning symptoms can call in to be assessed and, if deemed necessary, referred for testing. Finally, immediate contingency planning and federal funding is needed to quickly provide hospitals with surge capacity for space, staffing, and key equipment.

The coronavirus epidemic is rapidly escalating in the United States. In addition to social distancing measures, such as canceling public events and working from home, we need a health system strategy premised on testing, telehealth, and treatment that achieves the twin objectives of curbing transmission and optimizing care for the influx of patients expected in the coming weeks.

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Ranu S. Dhillon, MD, is global health physician at Harvard Medical School and is a member of the faculty of Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Global Health Equity Division. He works on building health systems in developing countries and served as an advisor to the president of Guinea and helped manage the country’s response to the Ebola epidemic. Follow him on Twitter at @RanuDhillon.
David Beier is a managing director of Bay City Capital. He previously served in several leadership roles at the intersection of government, policy, and technology, including chief domestic policy advisor to then-Vice President Al Gore, vice president for government affairs and policy at Genentech, senior vice president of global government affairs at Amgen, and counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
Devabhaktuni Srikrishna is the founder of Patient Knowhow, which curates patient educational content on YouTube and related research on PubMed. He worked on the response to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in Guinea. Follow him on Twitter at @sri_srikrishna.

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What the U.S. Needs to Do — Right Now — to Fight Coronavirus

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