Midmorning With Aundrea - November 13, 2020 (Part 1)

(Part 1 of 4) The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many hospitals to the breaking-point as the number of cases has soared.

We'll look at ways some hospitals have used to handle the situation.

And mental health workers are preparing for a very real "grief pandemic" due to the high volume of people complaining of depression as the coronavirus nightmare continues.

>> if frontline healthcare workers have been our superheroes during the coronavirus, hospitals and healthcare facilities have been the batcaves.

Constructing new hospital wings or new buildings costs hundreds of millions of dollars and can take years.

They're designed and built with the expectation of being able to last for decades.

And with the coronavirus, michelle miller is learning just how big a role they play in the fight.

Script: áánat hospitalááá hospitals were always designed to treat the sick.

But battling covid- 19 over the last 7 months has pushed many to their limit.

Doctor: the assumption that if you get sick, we're going to have a hospital bed for you, is a false assumption across the country, surges in cases have forced hospitals like chicago's rush university medical center..

& to spring into action.

..., the first thing we did was create a command center..

Dr. omar lateef is the president and c-e-o at rush to bring together all the different people in the organization, to represent all of the potential land mines and unmet needs that we would have.

And then we just took a giant board and wrote down, how do we physically change this hospital so that we can take care of larger numbers of people?

Eight years ago& without knowing a pandemic was on the horizon& rush added a new wing to their hospital& 4: 4:11 dr. omar lateef: when you build something for the future of healthcare, you try to build something that has flexibility or agility in it.

We built an eight hundred and thirty thousand square foot building in the city that has the ability to change airflows, the ability to double rooms, the ability to surge to one hundred and thirty three percent of its capacity.

: it's pretty intensive.

Former nurse& brenda smith is a healthcare designer with "perkins and will" the architectural firm that worked on the rush project : "we have phase where we first are trying to create sort of a list of all of the kinds of functional spaces that they need.// you look at the flow of people, both staff and patients, and you look at the flow of kind of equipment and all the things that are required to operate in that space.

And some of that's been rethought with covid.

Future design must also consider frontline healthcare workers, many who had to make hospitals their home dr. omar lateef: people stay sometimes 15 hours, 20 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours with little breaks in between.

So we really need to make sure that we provide areas where they can rest, things like respite rooms with just chairs where they can take a nap so they can safely get home.

Something else to consider& emergency conversions& transforming everything from city parks to conventions centers jason schoer : // you know, we had to move very fast.

Jason schroer , director of health with h-k-s, took on the task of converting a convention center in detroit back in april : 12:15 when we have to convert non health buildings into health buildings, that's where i think we begin to perhaps look at a diminishing standard of care which may not give us the best outcomes still& the task of re-purposing spaces is nothing new& 09:00 jeanne kisacky : ... they did temporary hospitals in the 1918 pandemic.

Historian jeanne kisacky says the flu presented its own challenges and solutions.

Jeanne kisacky : most of the hospitals are built along the old version, the big open wards, and they are rapidly overwhelmed // after the pandemic, there's a real shift to having smaller rooms and one patient per room or what they call one unit or one disease.

So they can have three patients with the same disease and they would put them in the same room.

If today's healthcare architects learn anything from their 20th century peers& it will be to take the lessons of this pandemic forward& improving our ability to respond to the next one.

36:05 mm: so the big lesson is.

36:12 js: i think the big lesson // hospitals must be designed to respond more rapidly // we're talking days and weeks, not months and years // we need to be thinking about creating a pandemic preparedness // in terms of flexibility, scheduling and the ability to compartmentalize infectious hotspots within hospitals // it's gonna be very important for hospitals to be able to maintain, you know, normal services during a cris.

As coronavirus deaths rise in the u-s and so many families lose loved ones, mental health experts are bracing for a grief pandemic.

Most people experience intense grief when they lose someone close, but for some they are unable to adapt to the loss as time goes on.

Elise preston has more on what's known as complicated grief.

Trt 1:47 these photos are a glimpse into the life of eric muldberg and what he had ahead of him& but in 2004, the 13 year old died of cancer..

Leaving his mother stephanie overwhelmed by his unimaginable loss.

He was so brave four years after eric's death&stephanie said it felt as though it just happened& every single day.

It hurt so much it was almost physical.

I didnt have any faith in myself to make good decisions.

She was suffering from prolonged grief disorder... or complicated grief& a condition that makes it difficult for a person to function because they experience intense, continued longing, sadness, and preoccupying thoughts of a loved one.

People will feel stuck, actually way forward and they kind of very often they're sort of caught up in some kind of either being afraid of the grief and trying to avoid it all the time dr katherine shear is the director of the center for complicated grief at columbia university.

She's concerned with so many loved ones separated and dying alone during the covid pandemic, we could see more people suffering prolonged grief.

Feeling guilty about not having been with them... angry about not being able to be with them... those kinds of reactions to covid will become derailers if you don't deal with them.

A recent study shows for every person who dies of covid-19, nine family members are left to grieve.

With the death toll climbing, millions are grieving.

Therapists are expecting to see a bereavement pandemic in the coming months.

Stephanie went through a 16 week treatment program at columbia.

I found out you can grieve and live at the same time- you can grieve and move forward at the same time she says she's grateful she can now find joy in her life.

Elise preston, cbs news new york.

About 20 percent of people who mourn the loss of loved ones deal with complicated grief.

Women and people of color grief.

Women and people of color are more prone as well as people with a history of anxiety and mental health struggles.

History made.

Senator kamala harris breaks barriers with her election to the second highest office in america.

A closer look at her