Cook County’s chief architect of COVID-19 response ousted, puzzling some, alarming others

Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin said he hadn’t been given a “coherent” explanation for why Dr. Terry Mason was let go. Suffredin said all of his experiences with the former head of the public health department in the past 10 days had been positive.

Adding to the day’s drama, Cook County Health announced Friday that it would close the emergency department at Provident Hospital for about a month starting Monday to figure out a better way to handle the “large volume of patients” and “challenges of a pandemic” at the South Side hospital.

Mason is the third highest ranking health official to be cut from county government in recent months. In November, the Board of Cook County Health voted to oust Dr. John Jay Shannon, the CEO of the county’s health arm.

In February, the health system’s chief financial officer, Ekerete Akpan, was dismissed.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/4/3/21207261/cook-countys-chief-architect-covid-19-response-coronavirus-out

That was a need identified by the emergency preparedness drills last year that imagined a pandemic spreading from China to Chicago.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/4/5/21207597/crimson-contagion-pandemic-preparations-chicago-coronavirus-public-health

Article gives some numbers on the odds of living after being put on ventilator..

It’s being tried on 10 of the most critically ill COVID-19 patients at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, the University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The patients are on ventilators and some are barely conscious.

“The first four patients who were intubated, two were extubated. One of them self-extubated, and became alert,” said Nader Pourhassan, the CEO of CytoDyn.

Now the two patients are out of the ICU.

Pourhassan said when he heard the results he had to stop what he was doing.

“And cried for about five minutes. It was very, very emotional,” Pourhassan said.

He said studies show that in the U.S., 85 percent of COVID-19 patients who end up needing ventilators will die.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/hiv-drug-showing-signs-successfully-treating-covid-19-patients/T4JT2CQNJVAARLERMWY4MS2FH4/

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