Infectious Disease Emergencies

COVID-19 has added new relevance to the relationship between the world’s public health and infectious diseases and makes timely the topic of this chapter, that is, infectious disease emergencies. When patients have infectious diseases and present in-hospital with life-threatening symptoms (e.g., septic shock), prompt response is crucial to saving their lives. This chapter approaches rapid response activation from the perspective of five infectious disease emergencies: sepsis and septic shock, acute hypoxemic respiratory failure due to severe pneumonia, hypovolemic shock due to acute infectious diarrheal illness, acute respiratory failure due to influenza virus infection, and acute respiratory failure due to COVID-19 (coronavirus disease of 2019) pneumonia. The highly detailed information (e.g., predisposing conditions, initial measures to take, diagnostic work-ups, and treatment) is presented in a fashion that immediately puts pertinent information at the fingertips of those who need it.