Health care workers in personal protective equipment attend to a patient.

How Much Help Do Health Care Systems Need to Survive Coronavirus?

By Michael Simkovic and Laleh Jalilian

Coronavirus has caused health care institutions’ precariously balanced finances to deteriorate by requiring the suspension of elective procedures in order to mitigate the spread of disease.

One of us has previously noted that less than 8% of the CARES Act stimulus package may reach the health care system, although there are options available to state governments and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to increase this amount. How much additional funding would it actually take to enable the health care system to continue functioning at close to normal capacity?

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Brazil.

COVID-19 in Brazil: Institutional Meltdown in the Middle of a Pandemic

By Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz

There has been no doubt fierce disagreement across the world’s democracies on how to fight the pandemic, i.e.: on how to protect public health while respecting civil liberties; on how to minimize the damage to jobs and businesses; on how strictly to enforce public health measures. Yet nowhere has a democratic country witnessed such frontal and public quarrel within its own government as in Brazil.

Not even in the U.S. have things  gone that far in the delicate relationship between Trump and Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). No other country seems to have had as many challenges in the courts related to the response to the crisis, either.

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Stockholm, Sweden.

Sweden’s Response to COVID-19: A Tale of Trust, Recommendations, and Odorous Nudges

By Behrang Kianzad and Timo Minssen

Introduction

The Swedish response to the Corona-crisis has been relatively moderate compared to most other countries.

Sweden did not opt for a total lockdown, did not close elementary schools, day cares, bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and other places of business. Public gatherings of up to 50 people are still allowed until further notice. Sweden’s intra EU borders remain open — in contrast to its neighbors Denmark, Finland and Norway — although the government has extended the  temporary entry ban to the EU via Sweden through May 15th.

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Forbidden City, Beijing, China.

Legal Tools Used in China in the COVID-19 Emergency

By Wang Chenguang

The Essential Role of Law in Containing the New Coronavirus

The stark truth in the COVID-19 emergency is the lack of effective drugs, therapies, and a vaccine at the moment and in the near future. Therefore the most effective way of containing the new coronavirus is still the traditional response of cutting off the channels of its human-to-human transmission. Realizing this fact, China has used, from the beginning, measures of social distancing, wearing face masks in public, quarantine and staying home to meet the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19. All of these measures are means to adapt normal human behaviors to an emergency situation. To do so, law — the most effective set of norms used to regulate people’s behavior — is logically utilized to stop the spread of the virus. This idea is clearly expressed by the Chinese government’s policy of legal, scientific and orderly containment of the disease.

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LOMBARDIA, ITALY - FEBRUARY 26, 2020: Empty hospital field tent for the first AID, a mobile medical unit of red cross for patient with Corona Virus. Camp room for people infected with an epidemic.

Framing the Digital Symposium – Global Responses to COVID-19: Rights, Democracy, and the Law

By Alicia Ely Yamin, Senior Fellow

This digital symposium presents a pointillistic portrait of the spectrum of rights-related measures adopted in response to COVID-19 in dozens of countries around the world. The impulse for this symposium emerges out of the conviction that it is imperative that we emerge from the throes of this pandemic not only with the fewest possible lives and livelihoods lost, but also with democratic institutions and the rule of law intact.

That portrait will invariably evolve during the duration of the symposium, and long beyond. Nonetheless, now is the time to begin collectively reflecting on lessons regarding the relationship between population health and decision-making in emerging, consolidated, and illiberal democracies alike — and their implications for the post-pandemic future we want.

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Busy Nurse's Station In Modern Hospital

Hospital Administration and the COVID-19 Pandemic (Part II)

By Chloe Reichel

This post is the second in a series of question and answer pieces with Rina Spence about hospital administration and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought numerous challenges to hospitals and hospital administrators: equipment shortages for both patients and health care workers; steep declines in revenue; and attendant staffing concerns.

Rina K. Spence served as the president and CEO of Emerson Hospital in Concord, MA from 1984 through 1994. Currently, Spence is an advisor to the Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and the Law Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Spence spoke with the Petrie-Flom Center to offer her perspective on the challenges hospitals are facing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversation touched on: the basics of hospital administration; the business-like model by which many hospitals are run; unpopular decisions hospitals are making during the pandemic, like furloughing some staff and slashing retirement benefits; and steps forward in addressing the COVID-19 crisis at the hospital-level.

We’ve lightly edited and condensed the interview, which is running as a series of question and answer pieces. This second installment provides an overview of the administrative decisions hospitals are making during the COVID-19 pandemic, including cutting benefits for employees and furloughing staff.

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Access to Drugs Before FDA Approval: Video Explainer with Christopher Robertson.

Access to Drugs Before FDA Approval: Video Explainer with Christopher Robertson

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised many questions about the regulation of drugs in the United States.

One such concern relates to the use of drugs for treatment of COVID-19 that have not yet been FDA approved.

In this video explainer produced by the James E. Rogers College of Law of The University of Arizona, Christopher Robertson, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research & Innovation, discusses these issues, including the Right to Try Act and off-label use of pharmaceuticals, with NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Alison Bateman-House, MPH, PhD.

Doctors and patients sit and talk. At the table near the window in the hospital.

When and How to Resume Non-Urgent Care During COVID-19

By Louise P. King, MD, JD and Sigal Klipstein, MD

In recent days, we have seen our efforts at physical distancing flatten curves to mesas and begun to discuss re-opening for “elective” –- more commonly referred to as non-urgent -– medical care.

At some fundamental level, almost all care is essential to the individual seeking it, just as all lives have intrinsic value. The question then is not what is “essential,” because in trying to create such a list we will invariably wish to include so many conditions that we will list much of the breadth of medicine.

Instead, the question must be: can we accommodate non-emergent/non-urgent care safely or not, and if yes, which care do we address first as we re-open? While we cannot address all the issues raised by these questions in this short piece, we will highlight some considerations below.

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