CBC: Hospitals ramp up pandemic plans for COVID-19

The CBC reported on hospitals’ preparedness and spoke wth UM researcher Anand Kumar in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences: 

Dr. Anand Kumar teaches medical microbiology at the University of Manitoba and works as a critical care physician in Winnipeg, where he sounded an alarm about lack of ventilators to care for patients during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.

Kumar expects the risk in terms of severity of illness in the potential COVID-19 pandemic will be similar to H1N1.

In 2009, many places found a major “choke point” was a lack of resources in intensive care units, including nurses. 

“The pressures on the health care system in terms of resources are likely to be similar,” Kumar said.