Fort Worth-area hospitals prepared for coronavirus ‘worst-case scenario,’ leader says
The leader of the Tarrant County Medical Society said he believes county health care professionals are prepared for a possible surge of COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, he’s been struck by the amount of specialty and retired physicians who have told him they want to help people who become infected with the novel coronavirus.
The spike of patients could hit Texas around May 5, according to projections from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Brian Swift, the society’s chief executive officer, said on Tuesday that he participates in two phone calls a day with professionals from across the state about their response to COVID-19 and the issues facing doctors. Based on those calls, Swift said he thinks Tarrant County is prepared for the worst-case scenario.
“I feel very good just talking with some of the medical directors,” he said. “I do feel optimistic that we know what to do. It is just a matter of execution on a lot of these things.”
On top of that, he’s been overwhelmed by people asking him what they can do to help.
“I’m getting calls every single day, whether it be from retired physicians or active doctors that have time on their hands because they’re not doing procedures,” Swift said. “They all want to help in some way.”
For some active physicians, Swift said their specialties might fall out of the realm of working with emergency operations or critically ill patients on ventilators — such as plastic surgeons.
“In order to get those sorts of doctors that may want to help, we have to make sure they have refresher courses to make sure they’re being used in the best possible way,” he said. “That’s the spirit I’m seeing of physicians. They want to work, they want to help and we’re trying to coordinate them.”
Swift said strides have already been made in how to better test and treat people.
“It was unimaginable five days ago that a company would be making 50,000 rapid tests that can give results in five minutes,” he said. “A week ago, we were talking about how difficult it was to get tests back from the labs in under five to 10 days. The progress being made is unbelievable when you think about it.”
The society also continues to encourage the public to keep social distancing.
“There is not one person who is going to say that social distancing doesn’t work,” he said. “It is the thing to do and that’s what everybody, individually, can do to help. Everybody can play a part and as soon as this is over, and it will be, we can all feel good knowing everybody did their part to help.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 1:39 PM.
