New York state just issued a drastic new guideline urging emergency-services workers not to bother trying to revive anyone without a pulse when they get to a scene, amid an overload of coronavirus patients.
While paramedics were previously told to spend up to 20 minutes trying to revive people found in cardiac arrest, the change is “necessary during the COVID-19 response to protect the health and safety of EMS providers by limiting their exposure, conserve resources, and ensure optimal use of equipment to save the greatest number of lives,’’ according to a state Health Department memo issued last week.
First-responders were outraged over the move.
“They’re not giving people a second chance to live anymore,’’ Oren Barzilay, head of the city union whose members include uniformed EMTs and paramedics, fumed of state officials.
“Our job is to bring patients back to life. This guideline takes that away from us,” he said. Full Story - Carl Campanile and Kate Sheehy - NY Post
Cuomo Deserves No Plaudits for His Handling of Corona Crisis
Facts prove that Cuomo put his state, and yes, the country as a whole, in danger with his last-minute disaster planning
During a press briefing on Tuesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo admitted that closing schools and colleges in his state was a spur-of-the-moment decision based on a health crisis for which he was not prepared. “What we said at a moment of crisis is ‘isolate everyone,’” Cuomo told reporters while seated in front of boxes of medical supplies. “Close the schools, close the colleges, send everyone home, isolate everyone in their home. [It] wasn’t even smart, frankly, to isolate younger people with older people.” It was a stunning confession.
The third-term Democratic governor, unsurprisingly, is earning media praise for his handling of the crisis. But even by late February, Cuomo boasted about his state’s accessibility to foreign travelers—his state, the governor said on February 26, is the “front door” for visitors from around the world—while only instituting voluntary quarantines for suspected coronavirus carriers. Read More: Enigmose
