Every state now has active cases of COVID-19. Although the spread and concentration of cases vary, many states are scrambling to prepare for a potential next wave of coronavirus hotspots.
On To the Point, the Commonwealth Funds David Radley, Jesse Baumgartner, and Eric Schneider, M.D., assess the health care resources states have to manage a potential COVID-19 surge. They report that:
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All states face significant health care delivery challenges if cases surge in the coming weeks or months.
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Resources vary. In Maryland, Oregon, and Vermont, hospital bed capacity is lower than in other states, but each has relatively higher physician supply; the opposite is true in Arkansas, Indiana, and Kentucky.
By pinpointing gaps in resources and capacity, the authors say, states can choose policy levers like social distancing measures or seek federal assistance if local outbreaks threaten to overwhelm them. In this post, Nancy Krieger of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health writes about the stunning lack of population health data
related to COVID-19 cases — including information on gender, race, and education. To make sure our response to the crisis is grounded in health justice, Krieger says we “must generate and publicly report data on how it affects different populations and social groups.”
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