Safety & Security: Breaking down coronavirus management

We see a lot of announcements about decisions being made regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19). But there has to be a lot happening behind the scenes.

So Rich Kolko, WINK News Safety & Security Specialist, decided to break it down. His last job in the FBI was as a crisis manager setting up and running command posts during a crisis.

There will be command posts, operations centers and intelligence centers — different names but several similarities.

Basically, an operations center is where people oversee operations, monitor information and, during a crisis, exchange information with many other entities. It’s sometimes called a command post, but that means there has to be a commander present, someone with the authority to make decisions.

Where are these being set up?

For coronavirus, these centers will be in every hospital, county health department, state and, finally, the CDC. Information will be delivered to the White House and World Health Organization.

And something like this should be happening in each of the 100 or so countries that have reported incidents of the virus.

What are they doing in these command posts?

People fill various roles such as incident commander, operations section, planning section chief, logistics and finance/admin.

And this is all part of the crisis management event, once they get a handle on this. Then, it becomes consequence management; that’s where they mitigate the event.

MORE:

• CDC Emergency Operations Center (EOC)
• FBI – Strategic Information & Operations (SIOC)
• FEMA – Pandemic Influenza Continuity of Operations Annex Template Instructions
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security – National Response Framework