在流行病期间，美国城市中约有五分之一的家庭没有得到所需的医疗护理

在流行病期间，美国城市中约有五分之一的家庭没有得到所需的医疗护理

When 28-year-old Katie Kinsey moved from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles in early March, she didn't expect the pandemic would affect her directly, at least not right away. But that's exactly what happened.

今年3月初，28岁的凯蒂·金赛从华盛顿特区搬到洛杉矶时，她没有想到流行病会直接影响到她，至少不会立刻影响到她。但事实就是如此。

"I had a sore throat and a debilitating cough," she says, "and when I say debilitating, I mean I couldn't talk without coughing." She couldn't lie down at night without coughing. She just wasn't getting enough air into her lungs, she says.

“我喉咙痛，咳嗽很厉害，”她说，“我说虚弱，是指我不咳嗽就没法说话。”她晚上躺下时总是咳嗽。她说，她只是没有得到足够的空气进入肺部。

Kinsey, who works as a federal consultant in nuclear defense technology, found herself coughing through phone meetings. And then things got worse. Her energy took a dive, and she felt achy all over, "so I was taking naps during the day." She never got a fever but worried about the coronavirus and accelerated her effort to find a doctor.

金赛是一名核防御技术方面的联邦顾问，她发现自己在电话会议上不停地咳嗽。然后事情变得更糟了。她的精力锐减，感到浑身疼痛，“所以我白天一直打个盹。”她从未发烧，但担心感染冠状病毒，于是加快了找医生的步伐。

She called nearly a dozen doctors listed on her insurance card, but all were booked. "Some said they were flooded with patients and couldn't take new patients. Others gave no explanation, and just said they were sorry and could put me on a waiting list." All the waiting lists were two to three months' long.

她给自己保险卡上列出的十几个医生打了电话，但都被预约了。一些人说，医院挤满了病人，无法接收新病人。其他人没有解释，只是说他们很抱歉，可以把我列入候补名单。”所有的等候名单都有两到三个月的时间。

Eventually Kinsey went to an urgent care clinic, got an X-ray and a diagnosis of severe bronchitis — not COVID-19. Antibiotics helped her get better. But she says she might have avoided "months of illness and lost days of work" had she been able to see a doctor sooner. She was sick for three months.

最终金赛去了一个紧急护理诊所，做了X光检查，并被诊断为严重支气管炎，而不是COVID-19。抗生素帮助她恢复了健康。但她说，如果她能早点去看医生，她可能会避免“数月的疾病和失去几天的工作”。她病了三个月。

Kinsey's experience is just one way the pandemic has delayed medical care for Americans in the last several months. A poll of households in the four largest U.S. cities by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds roughly one in every five have had at least one member who was unable to get medical care or who has had to delay care for a serious medical problem during the pandemic (ranging from 19% of households in New York City to 27% in Houston).

金赛的经历只是在过去几个月里，流行病延误了美国人的医疗护理的一个方面。NPR对美国四大城市家庭的民意调查，罗伯特·伍德·约翰逊基金会和哈佛大学T.H.Chan公共卫生学院发现，大约每五个家庭中就有一个家庭至少有一人在流行病期间因严重的医疗问题而无法获得医疗服务或不得不推迟治疗(纽约市19%的家庭到休斯敦27%的家庭不等)。

There were multiple reasons given. Many people reported, like Kinsey, that they could not find a doctor to see them as hospitals around the U.S. delayed or canceled certain medical procedures to focus resources on treating COVID-19.

有多种原因。许多人和金赛一样报告说，由于美国各地的医院推迟或取消了某些医疗程序，以集中资源治疗COVID-19，他们找不到医生为他们看病。

Other patients avoided critically important medical care because of fears they would catch the coronavirus while in a hospital or medical office.

还有一些病人因为担心在医院或医务室感染冠状病毒而避免接受非常重要的医疗护理。

"One thing we didn't expect from COVID was that we were going to drop 60% of our volume," says Ryan Stanton, an emergency physician in Lexington, Ky., and member of the board of directors of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

肯塔基州列克星敦的一位急诊医生莱恩·斯坦顿说:“我们没有料到COVID会使我们的业务量减少60%。”他还是美国急诊医师学会的董事会成员。

"We had people come in with heart attacks after having chest pain for three or four days," Stanton says, "or stroke patients who had significant loss of function for several days, if not a week. And I'd ask them why they hadn't come in, and they would say almost universally they were afraid of COVID."

斯坦顿说：“我们有人在胸痛三四天后出现心脏病发作，或者中风患者连续几天(如果不是一周的话)功能严重丧失。我会问他们为什么不来，他们会说几乎所有人都害怕COVID。”

The poll finds a majority of households in leading U.S. cities who delayed medical care for serious problems say they had negative health consequences as a result (ranging from 55% in Chicago to 75% in Houston and 63% in Los Angeles).

调查发现，在美国主要城市，大多数因严重问题而推迟医疗护理的家庭表示，他们因此而对健康造成负面影响。