Ingram's April 2023

The worst part of the 2020 pandemic has faded away, but health-care providers— and their patients—will feel the impact of that challenging time for years. On from COVID

by Dennis Boone

On May 11, just weeks from now, the Biden Administration will end a public-health emergency declaration issued more than three years ago as the pandemic swept the world. That same day, the Mid-America Regional Coun cil’s daily online COVID-tracking hub will go dark after 1,153 days. America will be able to breathe easy knowing that, as Gerald Ford declared upon suc ceeding the scandalized Richard Nixon as president, “the long national night mare is over.” Or is it? A virus credited with more than 1.06 million American deaths may no longer be raging at epidemic levels— not a single state health department reported COVID on April 9 in their preliminary reporting—but the virus that launched this scourge contin- ues to morph into new variants. It always will. More contagious, perhaps, but if recent history is a guide, less lethal. Still, the toll has been historic. Wor- ldwide, more than 6.8 million deaths have been attributed to the virus in all its forms. Nearly 10 percent of the planet’s population is known to have been infected; estimates suggest it

could be multiples of that. In the U.S., nearly 1.2 billion COVID tests were processed—an average of 3.5 per per son—674 million vaccine doses have been administered, and more than 6 million people were hospitalized at some point since February 2020. The cost of all that? Trillions. Not just for managing the health crisis and financing research and distribution of workable vaccines, but in lost work place productivity, lost worker income,

to one industry study. Worse, in 2021 alone, an estimated 3,600 health-care workers died after contracting the vi rus, many of them at work. That figure is more than 24 times the number of public-safety workers—police and fire fighters—who died in the line of duty over that same year. The path forward, health profes sionals say, offers reasons to be hope ful—and still too many reasons to be concerned.

“When a disaster occurs, it is not a great time to be exchanging business cards for the first time.”

— Lee Norman, former secretary of Health and Environment for the state of Kansas

KC Street Car

business failures, unpaid rent, lost life years because of suicide, drug abuse, and deferred health-care delivery. And, of course, a health-care deliv ery system rocked to its core and chal lenged in ways no living person can re call. An estimated 333,000 health-care workers, besieged with patient loads, quit their jobs in 2021 alone, according

“There is good news about where we are now with COVID-19,” says Lee Norman, former secretary of Health for Kansas and a past chief Medical Officer at The University of Kansas Hospital. For one, the virus is becoming more predictable in its behavior, which pro vides a better understanding of how to manage severe cases, he said. Lower

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April 2023