monday, july 27 , 2020. the washington post eZ re A
russell, associate administrator
of nursing operations, who helps
provide supplemental workers f or
the system’s two public hospitals
and 4 6 outpatient clinics.
Now, 162 staff members — i n-
cluding more than 50 nurses — are
quarantined, either because they
tested positive or are awaiting re-
sults. many others need flexible
schedules to accommodate child
care, she said. S ome cannot work in
coronavirus units because of their
own medical conditions. A few
contract nurses left abruptly after
learning their units would soon be
taking covid-19 patients.
russell has turned to the state
and the international nonprofit
Project Hope for resources, even
as she acts as a morale booster,
encouraging restaurants to send
meals a nd s upporting t he h ospital
CEo i n his cheerleading r ounds.
“It’s hard t o say how long w e can
do this. I just don’t know,” said
russell, who praised the commit-
ment of t he n urses. “ Like I said, it’s
a calling. But I don’t see it being
sustainable.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Jacqueline dupree and lena H. Sun
contributed to this report.who no longer needed intensive
care but a re n ot ready to go h ome.
“Normally, we are referring to
them,” Gularte said. “Now, they
are referring to u s.”
Donald m. Yealy, chair of emer-
gency medicine at the University
of Pittsburgh medical Center, said
rather than sending staff to other
states, his hospital has h elped oth-
ers virtually, particularly to sup-
port pulmonary and intensive
care physicians.
“Covid has been catalytic in
how we think about health care,”
Yealy said, providing lessons that
will outlast the pandemic.
But telehealth can do little to
relieve t he f atigue and fear that go
with front-line work in a pro-
longed pandemic. Donning and
doffing masks, gowns and gloves
is time-consuming. Nurses worry
about taking the virus home to
their families.
“It is high-energy work with a
constant grind that is hard on
people,” said michael Sweat, direc-
tor o f the Center f or Global Health
at the medical University of South
Carolina.
Coronavirus h as turned the reg-
ular staffing challenge at Harris
Health in Houston into a daily
life-or-death juggle for Pamelaand is approaching 300 new pa-
tients a day.
“A s the capacity increases, so
does the need f or additional staff,”
Scott Sasser, the incident com-
mander for Prisma Health’s c ovid-
19 response, said in a statement.
Prisma has so far shifted nurses
from one area to another, brought
back furloughed nurses, hired
more physicians and brought in
temporary nurse hires, among
other m easures, S asser said.
Bumpus has fielded calls from
nurses all over the country — and
even some as far afield as Britain
— wanting to know how they can
help. But Bumpus says she does
not h ave an easy answer.
“I’ve had to kind of just do my
own digging and use my connec-
tions,” she said. At first, she said,
interested nurses were asked to
register through the Texas Disas-
ter Volunteer registry, but then
the s ystem n ever s eemed to be put
to use. Later she learned — “by
happenstance... l iterally b y social
media” — that the state had con-
tracted with private agencies to
find nurses. So now she directs
callers to those agencies.
Even rural parts of Te xas that
were spared initially a re b eing rav-
aged by the virus, according toone of the root causes of the
problem in the United States is
that emergency departments and
ICUs are often operating a t or near
capacity, Abir and Nelson said,
putting t hem d angerously close t o
shortages before a crisis e ven hits.
Te xas, along with 32 other states,
has joined a licensure compact,
allowing nurses to practice across
state borders, but it is becoming
increasingly difficult to recruit
from o ther parts of the country.
Te xas medical facilities can ap-
ply to the Department of State
Health S ervices for staffers to fill a
critical shortage, typically for a
two-week period. But two weeks,
which would allow time to re-
spond to most disasters, hardly
registers in a pandemic, so facili-
ties have to ask for extensions or
make n ew a pplications.
South Carolina i ssued an order
this month that allows nursing
graduates who have not yet com-
pleted their licensing exams to
begin working under supervision.
Prisma Health, the state’s biggest
hospital system, said last week
that the number of p atients admit-
ted to its hospitals more than tri-
pled in the previous three weeks
NURSES From A
the coronavirus pandemic
BY MIN JOO KIMSEOUL — North Korea locked
down the city of Kaesong near the
border with South Korea after
finding what could be the coun-
try’s first official coronavirus
case there, state media reported
Sunday.
North Korea’s state-controlled
Central News Agency announced
“a critical situation in which the
vicious virus could be said to have
entered the country” after a sus-
pected patient returned from
South Korea by illegally crossing
the border last week.
Coronavirus test results were
described as “uncertain,” but the
person was still put under quar-
antine while health officials
launched an investigation into
those who might have come
in contact with the individu-
al in Kaesong, the state media
reported.
If confirmed, he or she would
be North Korea’s first official
coronavirus patient in a coun-
try that has remained “virus-
free,” according to Pyongyang
authorities.
North Korean leader Kim Jong
Un c onvened a Politburo meeting
Saturday to address “the danger-
ous situation in Kaesong City
that may lead to a deadly and
destructive disaster,” state media
said.
Kim declared a state of emer-
gency in the Kaesong area and
discussed lockdown measures
that were put in place late Friday,
shortly after the suspected case
was reported.
A coronavirus outbreak would
pose a significant threat to North
Korea’s limited health system,
which lacks basic protective
equipment and medical supplies.
The isolated country, mindful of
the threat, further sealed itself off
from the outside world as the
novel coronavirus spread to areasnear its border with China.
As early as January, North
Korea shut down cross-border
travel with China and russia,
although doing so severely limits
its business with those countries.It has restricted domestic trav-
el and placed diplomats and for-
eigners under effective house ar-
rest.
more than 1,100 people in the
country have been tested for thecoronavirus as of July 9, the
World Health organization’s rep-
resentative to Pyongyang was
quoted as saying in NK News, an
outlet based in Seoul that focuses
on North Korea. The representa-
tive said all tests came back
negative. About 600 North Kore-
ans were under quarantine.
International aid organiza-
tions have provided coronavirus
test kits and personal protective
equipment to North Korea.
Kim urged the Politburo to
“face up to the reality o f emergen-
cy” and ordered the virus re-
sponses be elevated, a shift to
“the maximum emergency sys-
tem,” the Central News Agency
reported.
officials also discussed the lax
performance of the guards along
the part of the border where the
suspected virus carrier crossed
into North Korea, the state media
reported, and promised to “ad-
minister a severe punishmentand take necessary measures.”
The Central News Agency said
the person in question had de-
fected to the South three years
ago.
more than 33,000 North Kore-
ans have fled to the South since
the early 1990 s to escape poverty
and political oppression. But it is
rare for the defectors who settled
in the South to head back.
South Korea’s military said in a
statement that its joint chiefs of
staff were inspecting the relevant
surveillance recordings. “A long
with related entities, we have
identified and are currently re-
viewing cases of certain individu-
als based on specific timing and
whereabouts,” the military said.
Defection across the heavily
armed border between North and
South Korea is extremely diffi-
cult. It is the world’s most forti-
fied frontier, w ith land mines and
armed soldiers.
[email protected]North Korea locks down border city as its first possible case is announced
koreAN ceNtrAl NewS AGeNcy/koreA NewS Service/ASSociAted PreSS
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared a state of emergency in
the Kaesong area at a Politburo meeting in Pyongyang o n Saturday.home on the Starr County Face-
book page. “Unfortunately, Starr
County memorial Hospital has
limited resources and our doctors
are going to have to decide who
receives treatment, and who is
sent home t o die,” he s aid.
Steven Gularte, chief executive
of Chambers Health in Anahuac,
Te x., 45 miles from Houston, said
he had t o bring in 10 nurses to h elp
staff his 14-bed hospital after
Houston facilities started appeal-
ing for help to care for patientsJohn H enderson, C Eo of the Texas
organization of rural and Com-
munity Hospitals.
“Unless things start getting bet-
ter in short order, we don’t have
enough staff,” he acknowledged.
As for filling critical staffing gaps
by moving people around, “even
the state admits that they can’t
continue to do that,” Henderson
said.
The situation has become so
dire in some r ural areas t hat Judge
Eloy Vera implored people to stayGo NAkAmurA/bloomberG
Doctors and nurses treat a patient in the covid- 19 intensive care
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