Philly-area hospitals are preparing for the worst | Coronavirus Newsletter

TL;DR: With cases and deaths rising locally, hospitals are bracing for a surge in patients. Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order is spreading to more counties and Comcast’s CEO donated $5 million so Philadelphia students could have laptops to learn remotely while schools are closed. In national news, President Donald Trump signed the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill, hoping to offset the economic fallout from the pandemic.

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— Ellie Silverman (@esilverman11, health@inquirer.com)

🏥 There were more coronavirus deaths reported in Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Delaware Counties, and the United States became the first country to top 100,000 confirmed cases. As cases escalate locally, hospitals are bracing for a surge in patients.

🏠 Gov. Tom Wolf expanded his stay-at-home order to another nine counties: Berks, Butler, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Luzerne, Pike, Wayne, Westmoreland, and York.

🗳️ Pennsylvania’s primary election is moved to June 2, joining 11 other states and D.C. rescheduling primaries to that day because of the coronavirus.

💰President Donald Trump signed the $2.2 trillion rescue package aimed to help businesses and workers amid the economic fallout from the pandemic. Here’s what you should know about the coronavirus stimulus checks.

🇬🇧 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tested positive for the coronavirus, making him the first leader of a major nation to contract it.

📈 As of Friday evening, there are more than 1,600 reported cases in the Philadelphia area. Track the spread here.

Philadelphia-area hospitals are preparing for the worst. Medical workers see what is happening in New York City, where a doctor at a hospital with 13 deaths in one day told the New York Times that the situation was “apocalyptic.” They predict we aren’t far behind, my colleagues Marie McCullough and Lisa Gartner report.

“We anticipate we are no more than two weeks behind New York City,” said P.J. Brennan, chief medical officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. “Cases are doubling every two to three days. ... You do the math.”

By that math, Penn’s six hospitals could have at least 1,472 coronavirus patients within two weeks. And that won’t even be the peak of the crisis, which Brennan said is projected to hit in late May or June.

In the meantime, hospitals are making do with scarce resources. Jefferson is working with fabric designers at its East Falls facility to make face masks and figure out how to re-sterilize used ones. Temple University will let the city use the Liacouras Center to expand hospital-bed capacity. Temple’s health system turned its 10-story building for neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery into a coronavirus hospital. There are tents set up outside of emergency departments so people with symptoms can be checked without exposing others.

Hospitals are struggling to find ways to keep its workers healthy, too. Penn checks employees’ temperatures at hospital entrances. Physicians and nurses feel like they’ve been thrown into a war, said oncologist Ravi Parikh, a physician at the VA Medical Center in West Philadelphia.

“But unlike traditional wars,” he and two colleagues wrote in an op-ed for The Inquirer, “these soldiers don’t sleep in trenches; they return home each night. Each trip home requires a renewed commitment to containment — to isolate their families from the disease they have spent the day fighting.”

All Pennsylvania schools are closed until at least April 6, and while children in private schools and in better-resourced suburbs may be better prepared for digital learning with internet access and computers, that isn’t the case for all Philadelphia School District children.

Only half of high school students and less than half of elementary school students have a computer at home, district officials said. With this disparity, and without provisions for students with special needs and English-language learners, the district has not been requiring students to learn while at home. They needed laptops.

On Thursday night, the Philadelphia school board voted to allow for the purchase of 50,000 Chromebooks to make this distance learning possible during the coronavirus-related closures. It would cost $11 million.

When Brian Roberts, Comcast’s CEO, learned that the school district would need to spend millions on computers, he wanted to help. He and his family gave $5 million to the Fund for the Philadelphia School District, the school system’s charitable arm, to help pay for the Chromebooks, my colleague Kristen Graham reported.

“There’s nothing much better than helping kids get on with their education, particularly at this time,” Roberts said. “Not being able to go to school was pretty stark."

🐶Terminally ill dogs come to this unusual hospice to live their best lives.

🐟 He’s on a one-man mission to clean up trash and help save sea life.

🎶 Bob Dylan dropped his first original song in 8 years. It’s called ‘Murder Most Foul.’

Though researchers warn it’s too early to know what the coronavirus’ affect on podcast subscriber numbers has been, Italy has seen a 10% increase in listening, with spikes in shows about religion and spirituality.

“Truth is,” my colleague Amy S. Rosenberg writes, “podcasters had already been our socially distant friends, broadcasting from their couches, or at least seeming to, directly to ours.”

Have a social distancing tip or question to share? Let us know at health@inquirer.com and your input might be featured in a future edition of this newsletter.

You don’t have to pay your taxes right now. My colleague Erin Arvedlund writes about that and other ways you can conserve cash during the coronavirus pandemic. Her other suggestions for saving include negotiating debt payments, stopping auto-payments, and keeping cash on hand. Read more for more ways to save money and cut expenses.

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