Do you work in healthcare? Tell us how coronavirus has impacted your Florida hospital
By Forrest Milburn ,
Ben Conarck and
Daniel Chang
Emergency room RN Erika Juvier, 24, gets fitted with a particulate respirator and surgical mask with a hood to make sure that the mask fits properly on her face during the test at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital’s employee headquarters on Thursday, March 5, 2020 in Miami, Florida.
Carl Juste
cjuste@miamiherald.com
The first positive case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in Florida was confirmed on March 1. Since then, the number of known cases in the state has grown to 173, as of Tuesday morning, and South Florida has emerged as the state’s epicenter for the pandemic.
For weeks, healthcare workers in Miami-Dade and across Florida have been caring for infectious and seriously patients while the science behind the coronavirus evolves. Though many have cited concerns about hospital capacity in case of a surge, doctors and nurses in Miami-Dade and Broward counties say that right now they are concerned about the risks of exposure when dealing with patients face-to-face.
While the level of risk among healthcare workers is high, there is no reliable data available about how many providers have contracted the disease.
Are you a nurse, doctor or work in the healthcare industry in Florida? Tell us what you’re seeing with the coronavirus at your hospital or healthcare facility, and help us cover how the pandemic is impacting facilities across the state. Fill out the form below — we’ll be in touch.
Forrest is the senior audience growth and engagement producer on the audience team, where he cares deeply about building reader loyalty and community engagement. He comes to the Miami Herald from the University of Texas at Austin. He most recently worked on the audience team at The Washington Post; but his Texas roots run deep, interning at papers across the Lonestar State.
Ben Conarck joined the Miami Herald as a healthcare reporter in August 2019 and led the newspaper’s award-winning coverage on the coronavirus pandemic. He is a member of the investigative team studying the forensics of Surfside’s Champlain Towers South collapse, work that was recognized with a staff Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Previously, Conarck was an investigative reporter covering criminal justice at the Florida Times-Union, where he received the Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award and the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting for his series with ProPublica on racial profiling by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
