At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, more than 40,000 students take tests twice a week for the coronavirus. They cannot enter campus buildings unless an app vouches that their test has come back negative. Everyone has to wear masks.
This is one of the most comprehensive plans by a major college to keep the virus under control. University scientists developed a quick, inexpensive saliva test. Other researchers put together a detailed computer model that suggested these measures would work, and that in-person instruction could go forward this fall.
But the predictive model included an oversight: It assumed that all of the students would do all of the things that they were told to.
Enough students continued to go to parties even after testing positive, showing how even the best thought-out plans to keep college education moving can fail when humans do not heed common sense or the commands from public health officials.
Last week, the university reported an unexpected upswing of coronavirus cases and imposed a lockdown. Students had to stay in their dorms or off-campus housing except for essential activities, which included going to class.
Randall Munroe, the creator of the popular internet comic strip XKCD, and a contributor to The Times, poked fun at the fact that two of the people who were key players in developing the models were physicists.
Cant understand why someone with a physics degree would be bad at judging how often college students get invited to parties, comments one of the XKCD characters.
Nigel Goldenfeld, one of the physicists who was the butt of the comic strip, replied in good humor. We enjoyed the joke, he said. But, he noted, it was not a completely accurate portrayal of what happened.
For one, while he and a fellow physicist, Sergei Maslov, had devoted effort to an epidemiological model for all of Illinois, the more detailed university simulation, modeling the movements of some 46,000 students, professors and others like servers in coffee shops and bars who interact with students, was the effort of a larger group and led by Dr. Goldenfeld and Ahmed E. Elbanna, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. (Its harder to make jokes about civil engineers.)
Second, they had indeed taken into account college partying and quite a bit of it more than 7,000 students partying three times a week in their model.
What the scientists had not taken into account was that some students would continue partying after they received a positive test result. It was willful noncompliance by a small group of people, Dr. Goldenfeld said.
Those were the key ingredients for a few people infecting many others. If you know you are positive, Dr. Elbanna said, and you go to a party, thats not just a bad act. Thats very, very dangerous.
Dr. Goldenfeld said the main purpose of the model was not to make precise predictions, but to help administrators make informed choices on what precautions made sense.
For example, the model showed that once-a-week screening, as university administrators originally planned, was too little, too slow. Students who were infected soon after a test cleared them would be infectious for days before the next test. The university increased the mandate to two tests a week, although now that schedule is only for undergraduate students.
Since the university clamped down last week, the number of new cases has dropped again, and the hope is that all students will now take the protocols more seriously.
Carl T. Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington in Seattle and an infectious disease expert, said most of the other large state universities were opening and hoping for the best without doing any kind of serious testing or theyve switched to largely online education.
What the University of Illinois has tried to do is pretty unusual, Dr. Bergstrom said. Being able to have an in-person semester at a school of that size with that kind of social atmosphere is really a remarkable accomplishment and I think they have a reasonable chance of pulling it off, he said. If it if it doesnt work, they gave it a damn good try.
The positivity rate for the tests is currently about 1 percent. Its higher than we would like, but its coming down, said Rebecca Lee Smith, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois. I am hopeful. Everything is going in the right direction.
Dr. Goldenfeld said the notoriety of recent days even had some upside: The XKCD zinging gave him street cred with his daughters, he said.
If you were wiping down every single Amazon package, can of chickpeas, and takeout container at the start of the pandemic, you certainly werent alone. Clorox, the worlds biggest maker of disinfectant cleaning materials, says its still recovering from high demand of its popular disinfectant wipes, not expected to return to shelves until 2021.
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Find developments on the coronavirus pandemic and the plan for recovery in the U.S. and Washington state.
Where cases stand in Washington
Dr. Anthony Fauci says while he remains confident aCOVID-19vaccine will come this year, it may be late 2021 before life returns to normal in the U.S.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Friday that the issue is how long it will take to get the vaccine out to enough people.
The United States plans to end enhanced health screening of travelers from certain countries next week, and those visitors will no longer be funneled through 15 large U.S. airports.
Those requirements were imposed in January to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the government will remove those edicts beginning Monday.
About 25,000 of the 55,000 students registered with Seattle Public Schools have logged onto the district's online systems since the soft start of fall classes.
The district isn't sure exactly what the issue is. A district spokesperson said they are trying to figure out if the low attendance during the "Strong Start" days has to do with connectivity issues or if there are other problems.
Virginia Tech's season opener against Virginia on Sept. 19 has been postponed because of "COVID-19 issues" at Virginia Tech, the school announced Saturday.
"After consultation with Atlantic Coast Conference officials, our counterparts at the University of Virginia, campus leadership at Virginia Tech and Dr. Mark Rogers, Chief Medical Officer for Virginia Tech Athletics, the mutual decision has been made to move the football game between Virginia Tech and Virginia at Lane Stadium to a later date stemming from COVID-19 issues at Virginia Tech," Virginia Tech said in a statement.
Virginia Tech also said that it would pause football activities for four days.
The Hokies are now scheduled to play their first game Sept. 26 against NC State; that game was previously postponed from Sept. 12 because of an increase in coronavirus cases in the Wolfpack athletic department.
The Cavaliers' first game will be Sept. 26 against Duke, the ACC announced. The date had been open for both teams. The schools were originally scheduled to play on Nov. 14.
The ACC also announced that Miami's game at Louisville on Sept. 19 will be played at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC, while Georgia Tech's home game against UCF remains at 3:30 p.m. and will air on ABC.
"The safety, as well as the physical and mental well-being of these young men and women entrusted to our care by their families remains our top priority," Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock said in a statement. "While we share the disappointment of everyone who hoped to begin the football season against our in-state rival, we remain optimistic that a full ACC football schedule can be played thanks to the flexibility the present format permits."
Virginia Tech coach Justin Fuente had alluded to issues during a Zoom call with reporters Wednesday, saying he didn't think the Hokies would be able to play this weekend if they had to.
"I don't know if we could, to be honest with you," Fuente said. "I don't know if we'd have made it. I figured someone would ask me if we could play today in this deal, and I'm going to tell you I don't know the answer to that."
On its web page, Virginia Tech reported Friday that it had 219 positive tests for the coronavirus in the previous seven days, putting its total infections at 633 since testing began Aug. 3. The numbers have risen steadily since students returned Aug. 24.
The school has not been releasing athlete-specific results.
Virginia released its latest numbers for athletes and athletic staff on Saturday, saying it has had five positive tests since the last update on Sept. 4. The school said four of the five positives were from students who recently returned to campus and that the football program has not had any positive results since the first report on July 24.
On Twitter, some of Virginia's coaches offered praise for their players.
"It is really this simple... you either are committed to your team or you are not," offensive line coach Garett Tujague tweeted. "There are those that can sacrifice for each other and then there are those that CAN NOT. The greatest thing is... You get to make that choice."
Running backs coach Mark Atuaia noted the "grave sacrifices" by his players.
"My heart goes out to them because no one is giving merit to the [discipline] my young brothers have displayed since the pandemic hit," he tweeted. "My UVA young brothers are AMAZING!!!"
Andrea Adelson contributed to this report.
Governor Cuomo Announces 35th Straight Day with COVID-19 Infection Rate Below 1 Percent | Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Skip to main content September 11, 2020
Albany, NY
0.98 Percent of Yesterday's COVID-19 Tests were Positive
5 COVID-19 Deaths in New York State Yesterday
SLA and State Police Task Force Visits 1,380 Establishments; Observes 7 Establishments Not in Compliance
Confirms 880 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 442,791; New Cases in 48 Counties
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the 35th straight day that New York State's COVID-19 infection rate has been below 1 percent. The number of new cases, percentage of tests that were positive and many other helpful data points are always available at forward.ny.gov.
"New York's ability to beat back COVID-19 and slow the spread depends on what we do. That's why it's so important to wear a mask, socially distance and wash your hands, and why local governments are critical partners in enforcing state guidance," Governor Cuomo said. "When informed citizens stay safe and play by the rules, 35 straight days with an infection rate below 1 percent is what you get. Now we have to stay New York Tough and maintain a vigilant attitude so we don't go back to the hell we experienced."
Yesterday, the State Liquor Authority and State Police Task Force visited 1,380 establishments in New York City and Long Island and observed 7 establishments that were not in compliance with state requirements. A county breakdown of yesterday's observed violations is below:
Today's data is summarized briefly below:
Of the 89,722 test results reported to New York State yesterday, 880, or 0.98 percent, were positive. Each region's percentage of positive test results reported over the last three days is as follows:
REGION
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
Capital Region
0.7%
1.4%
1.2%
CentralNew York
0.8%
1.0%
1.3%
Finger Lakes
0.6%
1.0%
1.1%
Long Island
1.8%
1.0%
1.3%
Mid-Hudson
1.3%
1.1%
1.2%
Mohawk Valley
0.5%
0.4%
1.0%
New York City
0.7%
1.0%
0.7%
North Country
0.8%
0.2%
0.2%
Southern Tier
0.3%
0.4%
0.7%
WesternNew York
1.5%
1.2%
1.5%
The Governor also confirmed 880 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 442,791 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 442,791 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
2,882
23
Allegany
93
0
Broome
1,395
12
Cattaraugus
239
3
Cayuga
185
0
Chautauqua
496
4
Chemung
239
21
Chenango
244
2
Clinton
152
0
Columbia
577
The school tests students who report symptoms and does some random testing. It also requires masks inside campus buildings and where social distancing isnt possible outside. But those restrictions dont apply off campus, where some 8,000 students live and most of the infections seem to have started.
Last weekend, campus police broke up a house party thrown by a coronavirus-positive student who claimed to be quarantining. Last month, the university quarantined all of its athletes after a group of them attended a local house party and 27 tested positive.
Updated Sept. 11, 2020
The latest on how schools are reopening amid the pandemic.
So far, the university has recorded no hospitalizations or deaths among students, a university spokeswoman said. Still, some in the community are nervous.
Everyone goes to the same places in Oxford, and I dont think the students are careful, said Megan Bernstein, 47, who said she had grown up in the town and was there to visit her father.
Trenton Jordan, 21, a junior, agreed. Probably 99.99 percent of the people, when they go to an off-campus party, arent wearing a mask, he said. Most college kids are not worried about the virus.
In Springfield, Mo., David Hinson, executive vice president of Drury University, said he has wrestled with whether to send students home should infections there continue rising. They spiked after school started in August, and he expects they may spike again now, after Labor Day. Most of Drurys 1,416 undergraduates live within three hours of campus, and so could have left the campus bubble to go home over the long weekend.
Drury currently has about 30 active cases, but its cumulative total now about 85 cases has steadily risen. About 875 students are living on campus this fall, in single rooms, down from 1,090 in a normal year. All classes are being held in person, but Mr. Hinson said that as far as he knows, no one has been infected in the classroom. The risk, he said, is greater in the dorms.
At a campaign stop in rural Waterloo, Iowa in late August, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst told a crowd of nearly 100 people that she believed healthcare providers were inflating COVID-19 death counts for profit.
"These healthcare providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they're doing?" she said, according to a report by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.
Ernst is fighting to keep her seat in one of a handful of competitive races that will determine control of the Senate in November. Her comment is the most prominent instance yet of Republican politicians parroting politicized misinformation about healthcare providers' reporting of COVID-19 cases. Medicare payment policy enacted by Congress to help struggling providers has become distorted as conspiracy theorists, including QAnon followers, tried to undermine COVID-19 death counts.
American Hospital Association President and CEO Rick Pollack in a blog post denied that hospitals are over-reporting COVID-19 cases for profit.
"The professionals of America's hospitals and health systems are focused on saving lives and treating illnesses period. They shouldn't have to waste precious time debunking theories that are offensive and untrue," Pollack said.
The discourse has had real-world consequences, as CMS recently required healthcare providers to obtain a positive COVID-19 test to get additional Medicare reimbursement and a HHS watchdog announced an audit into coronavirus-related inpatient hospital billing.
Seeds of doubtThe roots of the accusation that providers may be upcoding to take advantage of additional reimbursement for COVID-19 cases comes from television appearances in early April by Republican Minnesota state Rep. Scott Jensen, who is a family physician.
Jensen and Fox News hosts made comments on April 7 implying that COVID-19 death numbers could be inflated. Jensen raised concerns in an interview with a local news station based in North Dakota about Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that allowed physicians to list COVID-19 as a "probable" or "presumed" cause of death even if a definite diagnosis could not be made.
The next day, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci dismissed the concerns about inflated death counts.
"You will always have conspiracy theories when you have any challenging public health crisis. These are nothing but distractions," Fauci told reporters.
That evening, Fox News host Laura Ingraham invited Jensen to appear on her program. Jensen claimed that the CDC guidelines for death certificate completion allowed healthcare providers to "massage and sort of game the numbers," and implied that upcoding by healthcare providers may be financially motivated because Medicare pays a 20% Medicare inpatient add-on payment for cases of COVID-19.
"I would remind him that anytime healthcare intersects with dollars, things get awkward," Jensen said in response to Fauci's dismissal.
The right-leaning news website The Spectator picked up and amplified claims from Jensen's interview in an article headlined "Hospitals Get Paid More to List Patients as COVID-19 and Three Times as Much if the Patient Goes on Ventilator."
Jensen continued his campaign of skepticism on social media. In a Facebook post on April 15, Jensen said that jockeying for federal provider relief funds could incentivize states to inflate death counts and linked to an article published by the U.S. branch of RT, a news network owned by the Russian government. In a video posted April 19, Jensen claimed he wasn't accusing physicians of lying on death certificates, but said they could have been pressured by hospital administrators to get larger lump-sum payments from Medicare.
"Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate," Jensen said.
Jensen disclosed that the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice investigated two complaints regarding his comments about COVID-19 and dismissed them in July. On Sept. 5, Jensen said on Facebook that the state medical board has undertaken another investigation.
In an interview with Modern Healthcare, Jensen said he did not intend to accuse hospital administrators of anything wrong or fraudulent, but to point out that administrators may face a perverse incentive to code for COVID-19 if situations are ambiguous.
"I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to accuse someone of doing something there is no evidence that they did, but it does make sense to have a discussion as to how a door has been opened," Jensen said.
It is true that Congress created an 20% Medicare add-on payment for inpatient COVID-19 cases in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. Becky Greenfield, a healthcare associate at Wolfe Pincavage, said the additional payment was created to account for the nature of COVID-19 as a novel, complex disease that comes with many complications.
If hospitals are caught upcoding or miscoding patients, they could face False Claims Act liability and ultimately risk losing their Medicare and Medicaid licensure, Greenfield said.
"As a hospital that would be devastating, and those risks alone would outweigh any potential benefits of misrepresenting a patient's COVID-19 status," Greenfield said.
While the CDC guidelines for adding COVID-19 to death certificates were unorthodox, the agency was likely trying to account for issues with the availability and reliability of COVID-19 tests, said Katherine Drabiak, an associate professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health and College of Medicine.
"If it's something like choosing between COVID-19 or pneumonia, it can be difficult to disentangle what was the cause of death if a COVID-19 test has returned a false positive or negative," Drabiak said.
There could have been some economic pressure to designate patients as having COVID-19 as hospital administrators faced massive volume losses in the early days of the pandemic, but Drabiak said it was unlikely anything "nefarious" was going on.
Overall, analyses of deaths in 2020 compared with prior years appear to show that COVID-19 deaths may be undercounted. A New York Times analysis found that through Aug. 22, excess deaths were about 40% higher than the official COVID-19 death toll.
Real-world consequences
Political posturing over providers' incentives to upcode COVID-19 claims for profit cropped up again on May 26, when Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) asked a top official at HHS' Office of Inspector General about potential perverse incentives for healthcare providers.
"We are monitoring through our data accompanying bills and claims with a COVID diagnosis as a way to potentially upcode," Principal Deputy Inspector General for HHS Christi Grimm told members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
In August, the OIG added an audit of hospital billing to its work plan to ensure billing complied with federal requirements. A report on the audit is projected to be released in 2022.
CMS also announced that as of Sept. 1, healthcare providers have to provide documentation of a positive COVID-19 test to receive the 20% Medicare add-on payment. CMS said the agency made the change to address "potential Medicare program integrity risks." Hospitals opposed the new policy and voiced concern about the added administrative burden.
"CMS remains committed to safeguarding taxpayer dollars and strengthening program integrity in our operations and to ensuring that the medical review of patient health care claims continues while minimizing provider burden as much as possible," a CMS spokesperson said.
Greenfield said the new CMS policy appears to be some kind of response to the fringe conspiracy theory that hospitals are misclassifying patients as COVID-19 positive in order to get enhanced payment.
Death toll conspiracyThe political discourse was pulled further toward the fringe when conspiracy theorists in late August distorted data from a CDC report and tried to falsely claim that only the 6% of COVID-19 deaths listed with no comorbidities should have been counted in the COVID-19 death toll.
Some of those conspiracy theorists were followers of QAnon, set of conspiracy theories falsely alleging, among other things, that prominent Democratic politicians and celebrities are involved in a global child sex-trafficking operation. The ideology glorifies President Donald Trump as leading the fight against the supposed criminal activity.
Trump retweeted a QAnon follower that made false claims about the CDC's COVID-19 death statistics, and Twitter removed the tweet on Aug. 30 for violating rules about disinformation.
Jensen said he thought the conflation between his comments about CDC guidelines for completing death certificates and distortions of CDC reports on comorbidities was "terribly unfortunate."
"The idea that the 6% alone were supposed to be interpreted as COVID-19 deaths and not the rest of them is wrong, and I never said it," Jensen said.
The combination of the two theories crystallized in Ernst's comments. After saying at an Aug. 31 campaign stop that she was "so skeptical" of death counts, her office walked back the implication.
"Over 180,000 Americans have died because of COVID-19, and what matters is that we are getting the resources to Iowa that are needed to fight this virus and continuing to support our health care workers on the front lines, and that's what I'm focused on," Ernst said in a written statement.
Ernst faced swift backlash. Her opponent seized on the comments and ran a Facebook ad accusing Ernst of "peddling dangerous conspiracy theories." A group that represents 6,000 physicians, residents and medical students in Iowa called Ernst's comments "offensive," according to a report by the Quad-City Times. The Iowa Medical Society said Ernst apologized for her remarks but did not promise a public apology.
The American Hospital Association weighed in shortly after Ernst's comments, saying that "disturbing and disproven" theories had circulated about the COVID-19 death count. Pollack wrote in a blog post that hospitals and health systems adhere to strict coding standards.
"Hospitals do not receive extra funds when patients die from COVID-19. They are not over-reporting COVID-19 cases," Pollack said.
On Jan. 23, workers started building the Huoshenshan hospital for COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China. The photo above was taken on Jan. 30. Construction was done on Feb. 2, and the 1,000-bed hospital opened on Feb. 3. Today it stands empty of patients. Stringer/Getty Images hide caption
On Jan. 23, workers started building the Huoshenshan hospital for COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China. The photo above was taken on Jan. 30. Construction was done on Feb. 2, and the 1,000-bed hospital opened on Feb. 3. Today it stands empty of patients.
In February, China pulled off an impressive construction feat that caught the world's attention: Amid surging cases of COVID-19, China built two hospitals in the pandemic's epicenter, Wuhan, in under two weeks to isolate and treat COVID-19 patients. Consisting largely of prefabricated rooms and components, the two-story structures were dubbed "instant hospitals." NPR reported on the facilities just as the first one opened. But now the virus is under control in Wuhan, and life has more or less returned to normal. So, what happened to these "instant hospitals?"
The 1,000-bed Huoshenshan Hospital (meaning Fire God Mountain) opened its doors on Feb. 3. Five days later, its sister hospital, Leishenshan (meaning Thunder God Mountain), opened with another 1,500 beds. Although some reports indicate Leishenshan was slower to fill up than Huoshenshan, according to Chinese state media, it was soon operating at near full capacity as well.
"Most news that came out about [these hospitals] was state-run news by China, so there's little information on how effective they actually were, because there's a propensity to publicize only the better side of the news," says Raymond Pan, the design principal at HMC Architects. In 2011, Pan won an award for his design of Shunde Hospital of Southern Medical University in China, located where the first outbreak of SARS happened in 2003. At the request of Chinese health officials, his design allows the hospital to easily isolate any part of the hospital in the event of an infectious disease outbreak.
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Huoshenshan and Leishenshan were among 40 hospitals in Wuhan designated for serious and critical care for COVID-19 patients. Sixteen other makeshift hospitals were set up in converted gyms, convention and exhibition centers to isolate and treat mild cases, so those patients would not infect their families.
A temporary hospital set up in an exhibition center in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 18. The hospital, one of the dozen of its kind in Wuhan, hosts COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms. Barcroft Media via Getty Images hide caption
A temporary hospital set up in an exhibition center in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 18. The hospital, one of the dozen of its kind in Wuhan, hosts COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms.
The vigorous efforts seem to have worked, because just a month later, on March 10, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that the disease had been "basically curbed" in Wuhan and its province, Hubei. That day, the 16 makeshift hospitals were all shut down.
Huoshenshan and Leishenshan continued operating for another month, after which they sent their final batch of patients to regular hospitals and were officially sealed off and "retired" on April 15. According to state media, Leishenshan ended up treating a total of 2,011 patients over the two months it was operational. Government officials say there are no plans to demolish the hospitals yet, and they can be "reactivated at any time" if a second wave of infections hits.
"Although the health workers [in these two field hospitals] have returned to their workplaces, the equipment and facilities are still there so that if needed, the workers can be mobilized again and the hospital can be reopened," says Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
What happens after the pandemic is still unclear, but if the hospitals' predecessor is any indication, not much.
During the 2003 SARS outbreak, China built Xiaotangshan Hospital on the outskirts of Beijing in just seven days out of prefabricated components. That hospital is what inspired the "instant hospitals" in Wuhan.
According to Huang and state media, Xiaotangshan like the two in Wuhan was never meant to be a fully functioning hospital. Rather, it was built as a temporary field hospital that wasn't supposed to last more than three years. During the outbreak, it admitted one-seventh of the country's SARS patients over roughly two months an estimated 700 individuals. And then, it sat abandoned.
In 2010, the government announced that the facility would be demolished, but apparently, it wasn't "completely demolished," because in January 2020, renovations began to revitalize Xiaotangshan for COVID-19 patients. Again, its service period didn't last long only one and a half months. By April 29, the hospital was once again closed.
"If there was any negative impact [of the abandoned hospital sitting there for 17 years], it wasn't publicized," says Pan, but he has concerns. "Once a building deteriorates, there are environmental concerns," he says, such as pollution as pieces of the building fall apart or possible medical waste that can contaminate drinking, surface and ground waters if the building isn't properly cleaned and sanitized.
Huang says there were no reports of any medical waste leakage or health hazards while the SARS hospital sat abandoned. "To my knowledge, they have also sterilized [Huoshenshan and Leishenshan] to make sure there's no [medical waste] leakage, so I guess I have to trust their capability to not make this another health hazard," he says.
From an urban planning perspective, too, Pan says the hospitals occupy strategic locations within Wuhan, so if the hospitals are abandoned, it'll be a missed opportunity to do something valuable with the sites. If the buildings aren't demolished, he'd like to see them converted into other uses perhaps a rehab facility or even a museum. "But the obstacle is: How well was it built to be able to withstand longer-term use and conversion?" says Pan.
Many have also asked whether the "instant hospital" model can be adopted by other countries to fight the pandemic. Although prefabricated hospitals are gaining popularity, Pan says no one besides China has the resources or cost-effective labor to follow suit. It would be "prohibitively expensive" for any other country, he says.
Instead, the makeshift hospitals that were converted from existing large buildings have already been adopted by others. On Aug. 1, Hong Kong opened its first makeshift hospital at a convention center. Meanwhile, the U.S. has installed numerous "pop-up" medical facilities in convention centers, parking garages, stadiums, among other venues.
"These [makeshift hospitals] were very effective in treating patients [in China], especially mild cases," says Huang. "They prevented infections that would have happened if those patients had been sent home to crowded living situations."
A worker walks past bed frames as workers demolish installations at Wuhan's first makeshift hospital built to treat patients infected with COVID-19 in China's central Hubei province in August. Stringer/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
A worker walks past bed frames as workers demolish installations at Wuhan's first makeshift hospital built to treat patients infected with COVID-19 in China's central Hubei province in August.
Joanne Lu is a freelance journalist who covers global poverty and inequity. Her work has appeared in Humanosphere, The Guardian, Global Washington and War is Boring. Follow her on Twitter: @joannelu
Feds to help manage Anchorage's COVID-19 outbreak among the homeless Anchorage Daily News
