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‘That’s when all
hell broke loose’: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals
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新冠病毒患者已经让美国医院不堪重负
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By Michael Nedelman,
CNN
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CNN，Michael Nedelman报道
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Updated 4:18 PM ET,
Wed March 25, 2020
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北京时间2020年3月26日星期四，早上4:18,
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(CNN)“We
ended up getting our first positive patients — and that’s when all hell
broke loose,” said one New York City doctor.
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一名来自纽约的医生说:“我们接收到了第一批病人，从那时候开始，一切都乱了。”
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The doctor, who spoke to CNN on condition of
anonymity out of concern for his job, described a hospital that was woefully unprepared for an influx of Covid-19 patients that started roughly two weeks ago — which has
already stretched the hospital’s resources thin and led to severely ill
patients outnumbering ventilators.
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这位匿名 医生对CNN表示，他所在的医院，很不幸 ，大约两周前，在大量新冠 病人涌入 时未能做好充分的准备，现在医院的资源已经明显不足，呼吸机 的数量已无法满足重症患者的需求。
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“We don’t have the machines, we don’t
have the beds,” the doctor said.
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“我们没有足够的设备，没有足够的床位，”这位医生表示。
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“To think that we’re in New York City
and this is happening,” he added. “It’s like a third-world country
type of scenario. It’s mind-blowing.”
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“要知道，我们这是在纽约，一想到这是发生在纽约的情景——”他补充道。“就让人不敢想像，这简直就像是在第三世界。”
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At first, patients skewed toward the 70-plus age group, but in the past week or so there
have been a number of patients younger than 50.
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起初，患者主要集中于 70岁以上的人群，但在过去一周左右的时间里，已经出现了一些低于50岁的患者。
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“I don’t think
they understand the severity of this disease,” the doctor said of the
younger patients.
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“我想年轻人他们并不了解这次疫情的严重性，”这位医生说到。
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“Two weeks ago,
life was completely different.”
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“两周前，生活完全是另一翻景象。”
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Increasing capacity
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增加床位
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Public health
experts, including US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, have warned the US
could “become Italy,” where doctors in hospitals filled with
Covid-19 patients have been forced to ration care and choose who gets a
ventilator.
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公共卫生专家——包括美国卫生局局长杰罗姆·亚当斯（Jerome Adams），警告说，美国可能会“成为下一个意大利”——在意大利，医院里挤满了新冠病人，医生们不得不对医疗资源实行定量配给，有选择地为病人使用呼吸机。
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But the US may
already be seeing the beginnings of this in some areas, marking a new stage
of the nation’s outbreak.
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现在美国的一些地区已经看到了类似的端倪，这也标志着美国的疫情进入了一个新阶段。
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Used facemasks and bandanas: |
重复使用的口罩和头巾 |
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“The reality is
that what we’re seeing right now in our emergency rooms is dire,” said Dr. Craig Spencer, director of
global health in emergency medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia
University Medical Center in New York City.
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“现在我们急诊室里的情况非常严峻，”纽约长老会医院/纽约市哥伦比亚大学医学中心的全球紧急医疗卫生主任克雷格·斯宾塞博士说。
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“Last week when
I went to work, we talked about the one or two patients amongst the dozens of
others that might have been a Covid or coronavirus patient,” Spencer
told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday. “In my shift yesterday, nearly every
single patient that I took care of was coronavirus, and many of them
extremely severe. Many were put on breathing tubes. Many decompensated quite quickly.
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斯宾塞星期二对CNN表示：“上周的时候，我们接收的病人中，几十个中可能有一两个新冠病毒患者。昨天的时候，几乎我接收的每一个病人都是新冠病毒患者，而且很多都是重症，许多人需要使用呼吸机。而且很多人很快就代偿失调 了。
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“There is a very
different air this week than there was last week.”
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“这周的情况和上周已经完全不一样了。”
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A New York hospital system is barring visitors, including
partners, during childbirth due to coronavirus risk
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为了避免感染新冠病毒的风险，纽约一家医院禁止访客（包括伴侣）探望孕妇。
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Officials in New York state are pushing hospitals across the
state to increase capacity. The state is home to more than 6% of the
world’s confirmed cases so far — and roughly half of all US cases.
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纽约州的官员正在敦促全州的医院扩大容量。到目前为止，该州的确诊病例占全球的6%以上，约占全美病例的一半。
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In New York City,
plans are also underway to build emergency hospitals and backfill other hospitals with 1,000 beds in the
Javits Center, according to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In addition,
thousands of doctors and nurses, who are either retired or no longer see
patients, have signed up as a “surge health care force,” Cuomo said Wednesday.
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纽约州州长库莫(Andrew Cuomo)发表声明称，纽约市计划在贾维茨中心(Javits Center)修建急救医院，补充1,000个床位。此外，数以千计退休或离休的医生和护士报名参加了“医疗保健支援队”——库莫星期三表示。
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There are
simultaneous effort to procure ventilators for the most severe patients. According to Cuomo,
New York has procured 7,000 ventilators in addition to 4,000 already on hand,
and the White House said Tuesday that the state would receive two shipments
of 2,000 machines this week from the national stockpile. But the state needs 30,000, Cuomo said.
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同时，他们也正在想办法为重症病人购置 更多的呼吸机。库莫表示，纽约已经采购了7000台呼吸机备，目前现有4000台。白宫周二表示，政府将从国 家战略储备中心调集两批呼吸机，共2000台给纽约州。但库莫称，纽约州共需要3万台。
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The Strategic
National Stockpile said Wednesday that it held approximately 16,660 ventilators
before the coronavirus response, and ventilators have been deployed over the
past few days.
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周三，国家战略储备中心表示，在疫情爆发前，他们大约备有16,660台呼吸机，过去几天里已经陆续开始进行了部署。
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“An outbreak, a
pandemic like this could overwhelm any system in the world,” warned Dr.
Anthony Fauci, the United States’ top infectious disease expert. Without
enough ventilators, “that’s when you’re going to have to make some very
tough decisions.”
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美国首席传染病专家安东尼·福奇博士警告说：“这样的全球大流行病，可能会压垮世界上任何一个医疗系统。”“当呼吸机不够用的时候，你就不得不做出一些艰难的决定。”
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Cuomo also described
the extreme measures hospitals are planning to take to increase their
capacity for patients who need intensive care.
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库莫还介绍了医院计划采取的极端措施，以提高对需要重症监护病人的救治能力。
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“We’re going so
far as to trying an experimental procedure where we split the ventilator,” Cuomo said
Tuesday. “We use one ventilator for two patients. It’s difficult to
perform, it’s experimental, but at this point we have no alternative.”
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库莫周二表示:“我们正在尝试一种实验性的方法，——将呼吸机拆分开来。”“让两个病人同时使用一个呼吸机。这实现起来很困难，目前只是实验性的，但我们没有别的办法。”
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‘Exceptionally
chaotic’
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“异常混乱”
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It’s not just New York that’s feeling the pressure. Hospitals
across the country are seeing a surge of patients, a shortage of personal protective
equipment such as masks and gowns, and health care workers
who feel that they, their families and their patients are being put at risk.
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不是只有纽约感受到了压力，全美各地的医院都出现了病人激增 、口罩和外套 等个人防护装备短缺的情况，医护人员也开始担心自己、家人和病人的安全。
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Several nurses
around the country also spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, also fearing
they could lose their jobs.
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有来自不同地区的几名护士也接受了CNN的采访，但她们不愿透露姓名，因为担心会因此丢掉工作。
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One ER nurse in
Virginia described her hospital as “exceptionally chaotic,” with an
emergency department where potential Covid-19 patients were sitting next to
patients with other health conditions.
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弗吉尼亚州的一名急诊室护士称她所在的医院“异常混乱”，在他们的急诊室里，疑似新冠病人的患者就坐在有其他患者的旁边。
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“You have an
elderly couple that is having chest pain sitting right next to someone who
has a cough and flu,” she said. “I think that’s extremely reckless.”
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她说:“一对上了年纪的夫妇来看胸痛，旁边坐的一名就诊患者则是来看咳嗽和流感的。”“我觉得这太没有脑子了。”
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She said she hadn’t
hugged her daughter since the outbreak started, for fear she may pass
anything on to her.
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她说，自疫情爆发以来，她就没有抱过女儿，因为她担心会把病毒传染给女儿。
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Another nurse in
Georgia said she was repeatedly denied testing, even as her own symptoms
worsened over the course of a week. The nurse, who had cared for several
patients who died of pneumonia but were never tested for Covid-19, was
finally tested Tuesday — the same day she was admitted to the hospital and
put in isolation.
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乔治亚州的一名护士说，尽管她自己的症状在一周内不断恶化，但她还是一直未被接受检测。这名护士曾照顾过几名死于肺炎的病人，但她一直未能接受新冠病毒检测。本周二，她终于接受了核酸检测——就在同一天，她住进了医院，并被隔离。
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“It was not
until this morning that I could finally be tested,” she said as she gasped for breath between heavy coughs. “It is
insane. And it’s infuriating. You feel you have to scream to even be heard.”
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“直到今天早上，我才接受检测，”她一边说，一边在剧烈的咳嗽中喘 着气。“这太恐怖了，简直让人恼火。就感觉你扯破嗓子也没人听得到。”
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Judy
Sheridan-Gonzalez, an ER nurse at Montefiore Medical Center and president of
the New York State Nurses Association, said that “everybody is
terrified” about becoming infected because many lack the proper protective gear, and many are being told to reuse the same
mask between multiple patients.
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蒙蒂菲奥里医疗中心(Montefiore Medical Center)急诊室护士、纽约州护士协会(New York State Nurses Association)主席朱迪·谢里丹-冈萨雷斯(Judy
Sheridan-Gonzalez)说，“每个人都非常害怕”，怕被感染，因为很多人缺乏适当的防护装备，很多医务人员只能在不同病人之间重复使用同一个口罩。
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Sheridan-Gonzalez
said she fears not having enough ventilators or staff to take care of
everyone, but it hasn’t “hit that level yet” at her hospital.
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谢里丹-冈萨雷斯说，她担心呼吸机或工作人员可能会短缺，但她所在的医院“目前还没有出现这种情况”。
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Similarly, one New
York City private hospital executive, who requested anonymity, told CNN that
“many hospitals believe they are covered on ventilators. That
doesn’t mean some are not.”
Still, the shortage
of personal protective equipment continues to impact his and other hospitals.
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同样，一位不愿透露姓名的纽约私立医院的主管对CNN表示，“许多医院认为他们有足够的呼吸机。但这并不意味着别的医院没有出现呼吸机短缺的情况。”
话又说回来，个人防护设备短缺的情况仍在继续影响着他的医院和其他的一些医院。
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For
Sheridan-Gonzalez, the risk of becoming infected amid a shortage of masks and
gowns
is all too real.
“We feel an
obligation to take care of our patients. Everybody does. But we don’t want to
become sick and we also don’t want to become carriers,” she said.
“In my own hospital — and I don’t think it’s unique — we have a nurse
who is on a ventilator right now who contracted the virus.”
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对谢里丹-冈萨雷斯来说，由于口罩和防护服 的短缺，被感染的风险是真实存在的。
“我觉得我们有义务照顾我们的病人。大家都是这么想的。但我们不想被感染，不想成为病毒携带者。”她说，“在我所在的医院里——我想这肯定不是个例——就有一位护士感染了病毒，现在她已经上了呼吸机。”
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If the virus takes
out health care workers, “it’s game over. It’s lights out,” Dr.
Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine
at Baylor College of Medicine, previously told CNN.
“If we have
multiple frontline health care workers, ER physicians, nurses go down in this epidemic — a situation where you have colleagues
taking care of colleagues in the Intensive Care Unit — there’s nothing more destabilizing for the United States.”
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如果病毒夺去了前线医护人员的生命，“游戏就结束了。也就没有希望了。”贝勒医学院(Baylor College
of Medicine)国家热带医学院(National School of Tropical Medicine)教授兼院长彼得·霍特兹(Peter Hotez)博士此前对CNN表示。
“如果我们有多名一线 医护人员、急诊 医生、护士在这次疫情中倒下——你看到的情景是，重症监护病房 中，照顾病人的是他们的同事——那么对于美国来说，没有什么比这更让人不安的了。”
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Flattening the curve
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拉平曲线
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The capacity of US
health systems is at the core of the effort to “flatten the curve”
— to spread
out the number of
infections over time through measures such as social distancing.
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美国卫生系统目前工作的重点就是“拉平曲线”——通过社会疏远等措施，在一段时间内分散 感染人数。
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The goal: to prevent
hospitals from seeing a massive spike of patients arriving around the same
time.
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这样做的目的是：防止医院在同一时间内接收大量的病人。
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On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he
wanted the nation “opened up and just raring to go by Easter,”
which is April 12 — a date that few health experts believe will be
sufficient to contain the spread of coronavirus.
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周二，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)表示，他希望美国“在复活节的时候能重新开放，并整装待发”——复活节是4月12日，很少有卫生专家认为，到这一天美国可以遏制 住新冠病毒的传播。
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Earlier this month,
Fauci said “it probably would be several weeks or maybe longer before we
know whether we had an effect” on flattening the curve, and on Tuesday
he emphasized the need to be “flexible” in the timeline Trump laid
out.
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本月早些时候，福奇表示，“可能要过几周甚至更长的时间，我们才能知道拉平曲线的措施是否有效”。周二的时候，他再次强调，对于特朗普所提出的时间表，我们需要“灵活”。
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“Obviously, no
one is going to want to tone down things when you see things going on like in New York
City,” Fauci said Tuesday.
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“很明显，当你看到像在纽约这样的情况，没有人敢把措施缓和 下来，”福奇周二说。
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Some in New York
don’t foresee the outbreak abating anytime soon.
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纽约有些人认为疫情短期内不会减弱。
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On Wednesday, Cuomo
said he expects to see peak numbers of patients in approximately 21 days,
based on current projections.
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库莫星期三说，根据目前的预测，他预计在大约21天内，病例人数将达到高峰。
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“We’re really
at the beginning of this outbreak,” said NewYork-Presbyterian’s Spencer.
“And you can feel that. You can sense that. It’s palpable on the front lines in the emergency
department.”
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纽约长老会的斯宾塞说:“现在疫情才刚刚开始。你能感觉得到。你能感受得到。你到急诊科室，就会有明显的感觉。”
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In a series of tweets early Tuesday,
Spencer urged people to practice social distancing in order to save lives:
“We were too late to stop this virus. Full stop. But we can slow its
spread.
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周二早上，斯宾塞连发了几条推特，敦促人们为了他人的安全请开始进行社交疏远:“对于阻止新冠病毒，我们已经晚了。没的狡辩。但我们可以减缓它的蔓延。”
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“Hospitals are nearing capacity. We are running out of ventilators,” he said. “Ambulance sirens don’t stop.” |
“医院已接近满负荷运转。我们的呼吸机也快用完了，”他说。“救护车的警笛声 一直不绝于耳。” |
