Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Stat News: As coronavirus spreads, doctors in the ER warn 'the worst of it has not hit us yet'
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/31/doctors-hospitals-front-lines-coronavirus/
By HELEN BRANSWELL @HelenBranswell
MARCH 31, 2020
Streets in cities and towns across the country are eerily quiet. Car traffic has dropped so substantially air pollution is abating. In many places, people are hunkered down indoors, trying to avoid contracting Covid-19.
But the true battle against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease, is playing out in hospitals that are currently — or will soon be — engulfed in an onslaught of patients struggling to breathe.
The tsunami has crashed over Seattle, parts of California, New Orleans, and New York City. In Boston and other places along the eastern seaboard, the full force of the wave hasn’t yet hit, but it’s clear it is coming soon.
Hospitals everywhere are surging their capacity, discharging any patients who can safely go home and attempting to conserve dwindling supplies of personal protective equipment, or PPE. Some are resorting to extraordinary measures — even going so far as to sanitize used N95 masks by baking them — to prevent health care workers from becoming Covid-19 patients themselves.
What does it look like to be on the front lines of that response — and what can we expect to happen in facilities across the country in the weeks to come?
STAT spoke with three clinicians about what is happening in U.S. hospitals: Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Lifespan Health Systems in Providence, R.I.; Lakshman Swamy, an intensive care doctor at Boston University Medical Center and the VA Boston; and Craig Spencer, an ER physician and director of global health in emergency medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Spencer has firsthand experience with devastating infectious diseases: He contracted Ebola in West Africa in 2014.
</snip>
By HELEN BRANSWELL @HelenBranswell
MARCH 31, 2020
Streets in cities and towns across the country are eerily quiet. Car traffic has dropped so substantially air pollution is abating. In many places, people are hunkered down indoors, trying to avoid contracting Covid-19.
But the true battle against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease, is playing out in hospitals that are currently — or will soon be — engulfed in an onslaught of patients struggling to breathe.
The tsunami has crashed over Seattle, parts of California, New Orleans, and New York City. In Boston and other places along the eastern seaboard, the full force of the wave hasn’t yet hit, but it’s clear it is coming soon.
Hospitals everywhere are surging their capacity, discharging any patients who can safely go home and attempting to conserve dwindling supplies of personal protective equipment, or PPE. Some are resorting to extraordinary measures — even going so far as to sanitize used N95 masks by baking them — to prevent health care workers from becoming Covid-19 patients themselves.
What does it look like to be on the front lines of that response — and what can we expect to happen in facilities across the country in the weeks to come?
STAT spoke with three clinicians about what is happening in U.S. hospitals: Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Lifespan Health Systems in Providence, R.I.; Lakshman Swamy, an intensive care doctor at Boston University Medical Center and the VA Boston; and Craig Spencer, an ER physician and director of global health in emergency medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Spencer has firsthand experience with devastating infectious diseases: He contracted Ebola in West Africa in 2014.
</snip>
