THIS IS NOT A TEST-THIS IS AN EMERGENCY
Did I get your attention? Good! With CDC instructing Americans to prepare for coronavirus, COVID-19, we should heed this call and consider this an emergency. Here is what we know:
Beyond Asia, COVID-19 has now spread to Italy, Spain, and several countries in the Middle East and is achieving the benchmarks for a pandemic, although I should mention that WHO is not calling it a pandemic yet (give it a few days).
The number of known cases in the US stands at 53. However...
Diagnostic tools are limited, and CDC has stated that some of the testing kits distributed are not completely accurate, so we don't really know what the true count is, both here in the USA and abroad.
Virus carriers may be asymptomatic and shed the virus for a long incubation period before they present symptoms, if they do show symptoms at all; in other words someone may be infected and transmitting the virus for days without anyone knowing, so all of the body temperature checking would be useless in that period, and, as stated above, we don't have the testing available, even if we did have the capacity to test the numbers needed (which we do not have at the moment).
If COVID-19 is anything like its cousins, SARS and MERS, it can survive on surfaces for days, which would allow any goods, including food, paper money, etc. to become potential disease vectors.
Containment and quarantines will only slow the spread of the virus, it won't stop it.
We have been warned, so like an impending hurricane, for which we have warning, we need to stop, take the time, and prepare our households, communities, and companies and organizations. Waiting until COVID-19 has hit the US and starts to spread beyond a few communities and quarantines will be too late. We will see critical infrastructures impaired, exhausted and overwhelmed such as food supplies, transportation, and healthcare services (See further below). So, get started now.
Prepare your household (families, friends etc.). I am not going to write a long list for preparation here; ready.gov has already done that (just click on this link)
Prepare your community- see my earlier article "Won't You Be my Neighbor".
Prepare your organization- see my other article "Don't Waste a Crisis".
What might we expect to see when this hits North America? We need only take a look at Lombardy, Italy or China:
Schools, colleges, and universities closing and public events cancelled for weeks.
Bars, restaurants, shops, and entertainment all closed for weeks.
Public transportation would be limited; streets and highways with limited traffic as more people work from home or are quarantined.
Healthcare providers and hospitals will become overwhelmed by some who are presenting flu symptoms, some of whom may be sick with COVID-19, but also others who may not be sick with the flu (the worried well); hospital beds, ventilators, and medicines will be in short supply.
Factories and repair shops will be closed or run limited shifts.
Food chains will be disrupted with local stocks depleted in weeks to months; remember we are in a just-in-time system, and with people being quarantined and transportation limited, labor and goods will not flow easily.
Airlines will cancel flights as air travel grinds to a halt; rail travel will also be diminished.
Tourism will be impacted; people won't be travelling for vacations, and we won't be seeing tourists thronging to the USA.
This is something that may last a few weeks, months, or longer; we just don't know. So, get prepared and be ready as time is running out.
Andrew Boyarsky is President of Pinnacle Performance Management, a business continuity and disaster recovery consultancy focusing on non-profits and universities. He is also a Clinical Associate Professor in the Management and Systems MS at NYU and in the Emergency Management Graduate Program at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a part of the City University of New York. He is also host of the podcast Riding the Wave: Project Management for Emergency Managers.