Policy Brief: Rapidly Emerging Crisis:
Immediate Action-Items to Address the Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19) Outbreak in New York
Authors: Dr. Megan Coffee, MD, PhD; Evan Anderson, CEO, INVNT/IP
3.18.20
Executive Summary
The situation of rising COVID-19 caseloads in New York City is rapidly becoming a crisis on the level of the current situation in Lombardy, Italy. Such a situation would be disastrous, and can be mitigated by the rapid imposition of shelter-in-place requirements for residents and the immediate increase of ICU bed capacity and staff, and ventilator, PPE, and generic pharmaceutical supplies in order to reduce infection and transmission. In so doing, authorities will not only drastically reduce mortality in the city itself, but prevent an untenable explosion of disease transmission from New York into other areas, thus acting to protect the country and, specifically, the Eastern Seaboard and the capitol.