The Week in Philly from KYW Newsradio

Hospitals and first responders everywhere are sounding the alarm: they need more protective gear to fight COVID-19, and they need it now. How did our equipment supply get so scarce, so quickly? 

Today on KYW in Depth we're joined by Joe Tibbs, President at HAPevolve, a subsidiary of The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania. He helps us understand why hospitals don't have enough gear on hand to fight a pandemic, why they're having trouble ordering more, and the status of the hospital supply chain.

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6.6 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week. Villanova Assistant Professor of Practice in Economics David Fiorenza joins KYW In Depth to help us make sense of the numbers and talk about how long he thinks the unemployment rate will continue to go up, how high the unemployment rate could go, and how many of the jobs that are gone now might not be coming back.

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Hospitals in Philadelphia and around the country are treating COVID-19 patients while dealing with severe shortages of protective gear. It's a serious problem that will only get more challenging as the number of cases continues to rise. Judy Lubas and Gabi Yankelevich are two of the many medical students in Philadelphia who are taking on that challenge by volunteering their time and energy during the coronavirus pandemic to raise money and source, purchase, and deliver much needed N95 masks and other personal protective equipment to hospitals in the Philly area. 

If you'd like to help Judy, Gabi, and all the other medical students raise money for protective gear, you can find their information below:

The Medical Students for Masks website: https://sites.google.com/view/medical-students-for-masks-phl/home

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/medical-students-for-masks-philadelphia

Instagram: @medical_students_for_masks 

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In general, we probably don't pay enough attention to supply chains -- how products and services get made, delivered, sent from A to B to wherever someone needs them. But supply chains are incredibly important, a fact that we all suddenly realized when word first started spreading that we might not have enough personal protective equipment and medical supplies to get through a global virus pandemic. Drexel LeBow College of Business associate clinical professor David Kurz joins KYW in Depth to break down what supply chains are, which supply chains are proving to be resilient, and how the COVID-19 pandemic might change how we design and support supply chains moving forward.

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"I'm sure there's plenty of Americans going through similar cases, but when it’s happening to you, it's a little surreal."

Montgomery County was initially one of the hardest-hit counties in Pennsylvania battling the coronavirus crisis. For the first people in the county who tested positive weeks ago, when we knew even less about the virus, the uncertainty just added to the scariness of this pandemic. Today on KYW in Depth, KYW Newsradio's Suburban Bureau Chief Jim Melwert brings one family's experience of watching their loved one hospitalized with COVID-19 very early on in Montgomery County -- what it was like to watch a family member get ill and go to the hospital without being able to physically be there with them, how the illness progressed, how hard it was to get accurate information before anyone really knew what this was going to look like, and the lessons they learned that could potentially help other people going through the same thing.

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A lot of the attention during the coronavirus pandemic has been on big cities, where dense populations mean faster spread and more patients. But that doesn't mean that the danger posed by COVID-19 is any less in the suburbs or more rural areas. David Madonna is the Chief of Police in Prospect Park, a small borough in Delaware County, PA. He joins KYW In Depth to talk about the ways the job has changed for first responders in a small town during the pandemic, how the equipment shortage across the country is affecting Prospect Park, and how his department has been affected directly. "Responding to pandemics or handling a pandemic situation isn't something typically that we train for. But I would suspect that's going to change."  

Update from Chief Madonna: "One thing I wish I would've expressed more clearly is the support we are receiving from county officials. While our normal vendors have not been able to supply PPEs, Delaware County officials have been helpful in supplying us with gloves and masks."

 

Chief Madonna is on Twitter at @3P_Chief -- https://twitter.com/3P_Chief

 

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Can looking at the before and after of different calamitous events in history give us an idea about what life after the coronavirus pandemic might look like? University of Pennsylvania Assistant Professor of History Brent Cebul joins KYW In Depth to break down one of the most important times of disruption in American history, the Great Depression, and take a closer look at the political, societal, and economic changes that accompanied it. 

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One of the riskiest jobs right now is being done by the people who respond to 911 calls. EMTs, paramedics, and first responders are spending their days and nights getting sick people the medical care they need. So how does that already incredibly difficult job change when protective gear across the globe is backordered, and you're not sure how long your supplies are going to last or if you'll be able to get more? Jennifer Green, Deputy Chief of the Community Ambulance Association of Ambler joins KYW In Depth to discuss the unique challenges first responders are facing during the coronavirus pandemic.

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The COVID-19 pandemic comes on the heels of a national outbreak of lung injuries, which the CDC says are linked with vaping THC products and the additive vitamin E acetate. Dr. Jamie Garfield, an interventional pulmonologist at the Temple Lung Center joins KYW In Depth to talk about what we learned from the EVALI epidemic, the latest research about what both vaping and smoking does to the lungs and how that applies to the coronavirus pandemic, and tips for smokers who are concerned about COVID-19.

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Nationwide social distancing guidelines will stay in place until April 30th, and that's a good thing according to Montgomery County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh. The commissioner, who's also a medical doctor, spoke with Brandon Brooks on KYW Newsradio on Monday morning, March 30th, about when coronavirus is expected to peak in southeastern Pennsylvania, if Montomery County has enough personal protective equipment to deal with the pandemic, and why four more weeks of social distancing is necessary.

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