Catskill Regional Medical Center's Emergency Management Committee routinely conducts drills for anything from active shooters, mass casualties and even pandemics, hoping these things never occur, but ensuring there is a plan in place when a crisis does strike.

And to these committees, which are formed at hospitals across the globe, it is widely believed that a pandemic is the worst-case scenario.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, for the first time in his 25 years of hospital leadership, Catskill Regional Medical Center (CRMC) CEO Jonathan Schiller had to activate one such plan.