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PPE use and safe removal. The group also discussed the screening and management of possible Ebola patients; including quarantine guidelines and proper procedures when a healthcare worker may become exposed to the Ebola virus. “These meetings will help us all be on the same page regarding what we’ll do when, and if, a confirmed case of Ebola appears in Washtenaw County,” said Charles Koopmann, Jr., MD, Washtenaw County Medical Society President.
These work groups were the brainchild of Sandro Cinti, MD, an infectious disease expert from U of M Medical School, along with Robert Winfield, MD, of the University Health Service, Stan Reedy, MD, of the Washt- enaw County Health Department, and members of the WCMS Executive Council. Cinti, in an interview taped by WCMS in 2014, described his chief interest as “biopre- paredness” and explained that he had recognized early on that this was more than a “doctoring” problem: the most effective way to be prepared to manage outbreaks of communicable diseases – which in the 21st century included SARS, MERS, Anthrax, and Influenza – was through close collaboration among doctors, hospitals, and local and state public health officials, also including EMS, Police and Fire.
COVID-19 Arrives
Two years ago, in December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic began as cases of this new respiratory illness began to be reported from China. It didn’t get much high-level attention in the United States until the end of January 2020. At that time, we learned that a new muta- tion of the corona virus, the same type that had caused the deadly but geographically limited SARS and MERS outbreaks in 2003 and 2014 respectively, had been the cause of widespread illness and many deaths in Wuhan, China, and had the potential to spread rapidly around the world. The spread of the earlier corona viral SARS and MERS epidemics, although highly lethal, had been contained by isolation and quarantine measures. This may have been falsely reassuring, suggesting that this new mutant corona virus could be controlled in the same way. That, of course, turned out not to be the case as it became clear that this latest version of the corona virus was different. The disease spread across Asia, then jumped to Italy, Boston, and New York as well as to the Seattle and San Francisco areas, and appeared to be spread by persons who were not symptomatic, something not seen before with a corona virus.
By late February 2020 the pandemic had been given
its name, COVID-19, as had its causative agent, SARS- CoV-2. Over 70,000 cases and 2,000 deaths had been reported from China, which had imposed a complete lock-down. Spread by asymptomatic carriers was postu- lated. But the alarm bell had not rung – or if rung, was not heard – in the U.S. The Trump administration downplayed the threat, calling it ‘overblown,’ despite a world-wide shortage of personal protective equipment, most of which
Bank of Ann Arbor
Volume 73 • Number 4 Washtenaw County Medical Society BULLETIN
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