Health Affairs October 15, 2021
Before the COVID-19 pandemic the U.S. had started to build a national infrastructure to help identify, safely isolate and care for patients with high consequence infectious disease (HCIDs), but it was incomplete. With limited and unsustained investment to build a network to treat patients for a disease like Ebola, the Regional Ebola Treatment Network (RETN) created in 2014 was no match in 2020 for a more transmissible and more widespread pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 otherwise known as COVID-19.
The National Emerging Special Pathogen Training and Education Center (NETEC) and the Regional Ebola and Special Pathogen Treatment Centers (RESPTCs), first established as part of this national infrastructure in the aftermath of the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak, ended up serving as the initial...