COVID-19 and emergency planning

As COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, the author discusses emergency strategies, lessons from past epidemics and the vital role that healthcare managers can play in shaping responses to infectious diseases in today's global society.

On 9 January 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a cluster of patients with pneumonia who were infected with a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China (WHO, 2020a). On 30 January the WHO declared the subsequent outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (WHO, 2020b). As of 9 March, there were 109 577 confirmed cases globally, with 3123 deaths in China and 686 deaths outside China (WHO, 2020c), although these numbers change daily. The latest figures can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/v7hj2dl.

COVID-19 is related to, but different from, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, the main outbreaks of which occurred in 2003 and 2015 respectively. It has an estimated mean incubation period of 6.4 days, ranging from 2.1 to 11.1 days (Backer et al, 2020). Transmission is human-to-human (Li et al, 2020). Although an intermediary animal host may have had a role in initiating transmission-bats may be implicated-the animal host's identity remains unconfir med (WHO, 2020c).