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Interview With Paul O'Keefe
Aired May 14, 2003 - 15:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Testing America's terrorist preparedness is the main mission of Operation Topoff 2. The federal government is spending $16 million to stage the most extensive event of its kind. Our Jeanne Meserve is near the simulated action in the Chicago area. What do you see, Jeanne?
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I'm at Loyola University Medical Center, which an hour ago was absolutely flooded. So the first couple of days of this exercise at this hospital they were getting virtual patients. A piece of paper, in essence, presenting a series of symptoms. They kept track of these patients, what sort of treatments they received, where they were taken.
That was the early part of this exercise. Today they got a few more of these, and then they just got a flood of patients, 75 actors came in presenting symptoms of pneumonic plague, and they had to deal with them here. They put some of them on respirators. They took chest X-rays, all sorts of things, to simulate how they would react in a genuine mass casualty situation.
We have a guest here today. Dr. Paul O'Keefe joins us. He is an infectious disease specialist, also the head of the hospital's disaster preparedness task force. So tell us, it's almost over, apparently. How did the hospital perform?
DR. PAUL O'KEEFE, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Actually, we think the hospital performed very well. It was quite spectacular. The way we were able to find beds for all of these patients in a very busy place. We had excellent cooperation from our staff. We were able to mobilize them to help us out and to deal with this large influx of patients today.
MESERVE: The point of this exercise is to find the weak spots, the stress points, the friction points. Did you find some here today?
O'KEEFE: Let me just say first of all, that we found some very good points, some of which I've mentioned already, and there will be some weak spots that my guess we'll come out as we do further analysis, but at the point all things seem to have gone pretty well.
MESERVE: Now, is it sort of cheating? You knew ahead of time exactly what you were going to be dealing with. You are an infectious disease specialist. You know you wouldn't have known that.
O'KEEFE: That's right. We wouldn't have known that, and for a while we would have been in the dark on what this is, but I need to tell you that there was an excellent public health effort here so that we had information quite quickly, for example, using what we call syndrome surveillance to identify that there was a problem, and within 12 hours of that we knew what we were dealing with.
MESERVE: Dr. O'Keefe, thanks so much. I just want to point this out. This is protective gear. They found it in an earlier exercise. They did not have this stuff where they needed it. They put it in the right place today. Just an example of how these sorts of exercises can indeed help. Kyra, back to you.
PHILLIPS: All right, Jeanne Meserve, thank you so much. And if you are away from the TV, you can still keep up with the unfolding details of Operation Topoff 2 and the overall war on terrorism. Just go to cnn.com.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired May 14, 2003 - 15:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Testing America's terrorist preparedness is the main mission of Operation Topoff 2. The federal government is spending $16 million to stage the most extensive event of its kind. Our Jeanne Meserve is near the simulated action in the Chicago area. What do you see, Jeanne?
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I'm at Loyola University Medical Center, which an hour ago was absolutely flooded. So the first couple of days of this exercise at this hospital they were getting virtual patients. A piece of paper, in essence, presenting a series of symptoms. They kept track of these patients, what sort of treatments they received, where they were taken.
That was the early part of this exercise. Today they got a few more of these, and then they just got a flood of patients, 75 actors came in presenting symptoms of pneumonic plague, and they had to deal with them here. They put some of them on respirators. They took chest X-rays, all sorts of things, to simulate how they would react in a genuine mass casualty situation.
We have a guest here today. Dr. Paul O'Keefe joins us. He is an infectious disease specialist, also the head of the hospital's disaster preparedness task force. So tell us, it's almost over, apparently. How did the hospital perform?
DR. PAUL O'KEEFE, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Actually, we think the hospital performed very well. It was quite spectacular. The way we were able to find beds for all of these patients in a very busy place. We had excellent cooperation from our staff. We were able to mobilize them to help us out and to deal with this large influx of patients today.
MESERVE: The point of this exercise is to find the weak spots, the stress points, the friction points. Did you find some here today?
O'KEEFE: Let me just say first of all, that we found some very good points, some of which I've mentioned already, and there will be some weak spots that my guess we'll come out as we do further analysis, but at the point all things seem to have gone pretty well.
MESERVE: Now, is it sort of cheating? You knew ahead of time exactly what you were going to be dealing with. You are an infectious disease specialist. You know you wouldn't have known that.
O'KEEFE: That's right. We wouldn't have known that, and for a while we would have been in the dark on what this is, but I need to tell you that there was an excellent public health effort here so that we had information quite quickly, for example, using what we call syndrome surveillance to identify that there was a problem, and within 12 hours of that we knew what we were dealing with.
MESERVE: Dr. O'Keefe, thanks so much. I just want to point this out. This is protective gear. They found it in an earlier exercise. They did not have this stuff where they needed it. They put it in the right place today. Just an example of how these sorts of exercises can indeed help. Kyra, back to you.
PHILLIPS: All right, Jeanne Meserve, thank you so much. And if you are away from the TV, you can still keep up with the unfolding details of Operation Topoff 2 and the overall war on terrorism. Just go to cnn.com.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
