Philadelphia Medicine Fall 2020 - 20

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point of view continued

'We need to communicate early and often, clearly
and with compassion.'
- Dr. Amanda Cohn, acting chief medical officer at the National
Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
anything that's acquired in hospitals or medical offices."
Johnson said the environment is really quite safe out there.
"Surgery can be performed safely because we have managed at
least to keep the infection out of health-care institutions, via our
screening protocols, by the wearing of PPE. I believe most of the
hospitals are doing COVID-19 testing prior to any kind of procedure
prior to admission. If they know that someone is infected, they can
handle them in a specific way," she said.
"I feel comfortable. I don't have any concerns about going into
a health-care facility."

Return to normal?
Does this mean that normally elective procedures have returned
to pre-COVID-19 levels?
Poporad believes that depends on the confidence in safety that
the general public, and the elective centers, have.
But there's a never-ending supply for elective surgery, he said.
There are plastic surgeries being done, Poporad said. "People have
money that they haven't spent. People are on Zoom and what-not,
and they are more conscious of their appearance. They are not going
out, so they're getting plastic surgery or whatever that they wouldn't
have gotten done maybe a year or two ago."
Will post-COVID-19 mean a return to normal?
"I don't think so," he said. "At least not for a year or two or more,
because if you have a vaccine that is 99% effective, you have 70%
of the population that wants to take it, that's still a large percentage
of people who are not protected."

20 Philadelphia Medicine : Fall 2020

Just as with any infection, the idea is protect everyone.
"That's the way it's going to be," he said. "What you see now is
what's going to continue or maybe become the norm, going forward."

Rising confidence
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, noted
that with the help of health-care providers, there should be rising
confidence to having elective surgeries by the public.
"We need to communicate early and often, clearly and with
compassion," said Dr. Amanda Cohn, acting chief medical officer
at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases,
or NCIRD, and executive secretary for the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices, or ACIP, for CDC.
The three pillars of the strategy are to reinforce trust, to empower
health care providers to promote confidence among health care
personnel and to engage communities and individuals.
About five years ago, entrepreneur Bill Gates gave a lecture about
a potential global-crippling pandemic, Poporad noted.
"So here we are," he said. "Is this going to be the last one we see?"
Government pandemic protection organizations have to "become
more robust," Poporad said. "The infrastructure is in place. It just
needs to be operational at a higher level." *
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Philadelphia Medicine Fall 2020

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