Huntsville Hospital’s emergency department is prepared for a surge of coronavirus cases this month, but its top doctor still worries.

“I look at it almost like knowing ahead of time a tornado is coming, and it’s not going to be just a single tornado,” Dr. Sherrie Squyres said Wednesday. “It’s going to be a protracted tornado that last for months.”

Squyres is medical director of Huntsville Hospital’s Emergency Department, is board certified in emergency medicine and has practiced medicine in Huntsville for 30 years. She oversees ER policies and manages the physicians who serve there.

Squyres worries that people with the virus in states with crowded hospitals may head for her ER, too. “People will travel to where they think they can get care,” she said.

She worries that people with other real needs won’t come to the emergency room because they’re afraid of the virus. There’s no risk, Squyres said. It’s handled.

And she worries about the people of north Alabama with serious existing health conditions. If they get the virus, she’s afraid they won’t be able to fight it off.

But Huntsville has had time to prepare, she said, and it has used that time.

“It’s weird,” Squyres said, “because we can benefit from others around us going through this a little ahead of us. We’re very, very fortunate to be on this end of the curve, the come-to-the-party-later group.”

Squyres isn’t worried about things she and Madison County’s leaders can control and plan for. Many medical and political leaders here have known and worked with each other for years, she said. Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle texted her directly with a question this week.

Huntsville Hospital has cordoned and sealed off one of four “pods” in its ER solely for coronavirus admissions. “We’ll expand into the next one if we need to,” Squyres said.

There’s a separate entrance for ambulances with patients that might have the virus. People who walk up are stopped, questioned and deflected if necessary to the coronavirus pod before they can enter the main ER. People don’t have to fear catching the virus at the ER, Squyres said. “They’re not going to catch Covid here,” she said. “We’re going to make sure.”

“Before we walk in to see a patient, we are fully garbed and ready to go,” Squyres said. “We’re in masks and gowns and gloves and we’re protected. We feel like it’s a very safe area to work in.”

Still, six hospital employees have tested positive, Squyres said, “and none of them have been hospitalized here at Huntsville.”

“Some of them, we don’t know if they got it here,” she said. “It’s out in the community, too. I’ve had people from call centers, people from NASA … it is out there in the community.”

Squyres’s husband works on Redstone Arsenal but has worked from home for two weeks. “Do I worry about taking something home?” she asked. “I’m just real careful.”

Medical professionals like Squyres say Huntsville’s “biggest battles are a couple of weeks down the road.”

“Am I afraid it will really hit hard? I am,” she said. “We have a lot of frail people. People that are on immunosuppressive drugs. We have a lot of patients who have COPD. We have a lot of people that have cancer that are on chemotherapy. If those people get this, it’ll be fatal. You just can’t fight it in these people.

"But if we can keep them segregated and we do a good job avoiding contact with others and really do what we’re supposed to do, I don’t have a doubt in the world we can do well with this thing.”