1,000 signatures reached
To: Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Prevent Hospitals From Becoming Coronavirus Super Spreaders
We need separate treatment centers for highly contagious coronavirus-ONLY patients (suspected or positive) so that hospitals don't become virus super-spreaders that infect non-COVID patients & decimate our improperly protected frontline healthcare workforce. These treatment/quarantine centers need to be of hermetic quality: they need negative pressure ventilation to pull airborne virus particles out of the air and sliding doors to prevent the virus from leaving rooms with drafts. We have to make our hospitals safer so that the thousands of New Yorkers who are pouring into our ERs and the medical professionals tending to them have a fighting chance to survive.
Why is this important?
I am a doctor working on the frontlines at a NYC hospital battling coronavirus and am already seeing the fatal impacts from our failure to take the strictest precautions. At my hospital we have already lost colleagues and far too many patients to coronavirus because we have failed to enact the stringent protections necessary. In addition to the the need for for increased PPE (personal protective equipment), respirators, ventilators, and testing, we also need to protect hospital workers and patients from airborne transmission of the disease. Studies are finding you don't need to be directly coughed on to get the virus - it can linger in the air for up to 3 hours, and contained spaces with closed ventilation (e.g. medical floors and ER departments) are most at risk.
The current and tragically inadequate CDC guidelines protect health care workers only from droplet transmission (think of the moisture that lands in your tissue when you sneeze) but this virus can be transmitted by much smaller aerosol particles that float in the air. In order to defeat the virus, we must prevent aerosol transmission in our COVID treatment centers and make sure the treatment center workforce can wear at all times the proper PPE (full body hazmat suits with PAPR or N95 respirators with face shields, gloves, goggles, shoe/boot covers) so they will not get infected, stay healthy and be able to continue to treat patients. We can do this - together. Please sign your name to help get it done and defeat this virus.
Reference: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487110-tests-indicate-coronavirus-can-survive-in-the-air