"It has called out every resource that we could imagine," said University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security (CHHS) director and University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law professor Michael Greenberger, JD, on the April 30 edition of Virtual Face to Face with Dr. Bruce Jarrell.  

Greenberger teaches a wide range of courses relating to emergency management, such as Law and Policy of Emergency Public Health Response and Law and Policy of Emergency Management. He founded CHHS in 2002 as a nonprofit group and academic center committed to maximizing organizational resilience before, during, and after an emergency event.

Interim President Bruce Jarrell interviews Professor Michael Greenberger

“We’ve gone through SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Ebola, Zika. Every time these pathogens have raised their ugly head, we are called upon by groups both nationally and internationally, and in Ebola we were advising West African countries that were the epicenter of Ebola about how they should respond, how they should organize themselves to respond to these crises,” Greenberger said. “Let me be quick to say that we have never experienced an all-out, full-court press the way we have with COVID-19.”

“We’re pleased to have Professor Greenberger with us, particularly because his expertise in health and homeland security goes deep and wide,” host and Interim President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, told the audience. “And there are a number of things that you may have seen in the popular press about topics that he has a lot of expertise in.”

As soon as the audience was permitted to ask questions, it became clear an important topic was the impact of COVID-19 on Maryland’s nursing homes. So far, more than half of the COVID-19-related deaths in Maryland have occurred in such facilities, and the audience was interested in legal protections for residents who live in crowded conditions Greenberger described as “the exact opposite of social distancing.”

“I just wanted to hear your thoughts about quarantining nursing homes,” said Parking and Transportation Services program specialist Janet Thomas, “because it just got worse in nursing homes because it wasn’t contained in any way.”

“This has been a point of great frustration for me and my center, because in September of 2016, the Obama administration passed regulations requiring nursing homes, and for that matter all long-term living facilities, to have emergency operations plans to train personnel and test personnel on dealing with crises. One of the things that should have been addressed, and if it had been enforced would have been addressed, is how nursing homes would relate to a pandemic,” Greenberger replied.  

Other anonymous questioners expressed feeling frustrated and “powerless” to help loved ones living in long-term care facilities. 

“There are planning, training, and exercise remedies that can be brought to bear to make nursing homes less dangerous,” Greenberger said. “We can with enough notice protect senior citizens and people who are ill.”

Others had questions about the other side of the health care equation — the rights of providers.

“I’m concerned about the rights of health care professionals and workers,” said University of Maryland School of Pharmacy professor Cynthia Boyle, PharmD. “I just wonder what the role of OSHA is in this and is it really effective? We tend to think of it in a checklist manner, I think. And the other side of this is that we get our professional licenses through our state boards, and I wonder what role they’re playing because their stated goals are really to protect the public.”

“One of the major pieces of litigation that we have studied up until this crisis was when the Iraqi war broke out in 2003 there was a tremendous worry that the Iraqis would weaponize smallpox,” Greenberger said, offering the example of a nurses’ union in New York that sued the state for the mandate that the nurses be vaccinated or revaccinated for smallpox and won. “The very laws that we have in Maryland that give the governor extraordinary powers, they also give rights to citizens,” he said, adding that Maryland courts will hear citizens’ complaints that a state mandate is “overboard.” 

Watch the entire program in the video window below.