Public Health Issue – Typhoon Evacuation During the Pandemic

Public Health Issue – Typhoon Evacuation during the Pandemic
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February 6, 2021
Understanding the relationship between the ongoing battle against Climate Change and the recent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is essential for any healthcare worker. It allows him to appreciate the seemingly unrelated public health issue better and prepare for future issues and occurrences that might come in the way. Accordingly, one of the public health issues that the American Public Health Association has identified in line with the environmental issue of climate change is the possibility of increasing the rates of cross-contamination during evacuation protocols. This public health issue is in line with the anticipation and early foresight that the worsening weather conditions (brought about by Climate Change) would require the evacuation of specific populations into shelters that could compromise their health CITATION Ame21 \l 1033 (American Public Health Association, 2021). Thus, in this paper, the author would discuss this issue and how this could affect the overall healthcare system.
Evacuation during the Pandemic
Ever since the start of the pandemic and the quarantine period, policymakers, regulators, and even healthcare providers have been looking at ways to mitigate the pandemic dangers during environmental disasters. Mainly, due to the increasing number and intensity of typhoons in the American territory, it is expected that the number of emergency refugees in evacuation shelters would increase during times when it is most unexpected. While these disasters were adequately addressed before, the pandemic dangers would necessitate social distancing and quarantine protocols, thereby decreasing evacuation space for the citizens CITATION Tri21 \l 1033 (Tripathi, Bhatia, Mohanty, Karmakar, & Ghosh, 2021). Accordingly, even though some proposals were stating that both social distancing measures and evacuation needs could be met by 'relocating' the evacuees to various places, studies have also shown that these types of solutions "increase the total number of COVID‐19 cases in both origin and destination locations" CITATION Pei20 \l 1033 (Pei, Dahl, Yamana, Licker, & Shaman, 2020).
Problem Statement
In this case, the very problem that needs to be addressed is how cross-contamination can be contained despite the possible occurrence of emergency evacuations of thousands of citizens during environmental disasters. On the one hand, this issue is rooted because disaster risks and reduction policies of the State require the evacuees to move towards pre-designated evacuation shelters. The numbers of these evacuees are difficult to ascertain, and that an under-estimation or over-estimation of the possible number of evacuees could result in a lack of supply or wasted resources, respectively.
On the other hand, this is al...