Dr. Kimberly Shriner remembers the first covid-19 patient at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, California, in March 2020.
He was a 35 -year -old man who arrived at the breathtaking hospital.
“He went directly to our intensive care unit. We were very suspicious that he had a covid,” said ABC News Shriner, specialist in infectious diseases and medical director of the infectious disease and infections hospital.
The tests were minimal at the time, but ultimately the results returned and confirmed that he was covid. The patient was finally under sedation and intubated, and died 24 hours later. Shriner said that the next patients admitted to the COVID-19 hospital has followed similar trajectories, becoming more and more breath before dying of their illness.
“As doctors, we understand death,” said Shriner. “We understand that we cannot save each patient, but when you have 100% mortality with your first experience with this thing, it was quite overwhelming and intimidating. This first week (was) particularly surreal.”
Tuesday, March 11, marked five years since the World Health Organization (WHO) said the global epidemic of COVID-19 to be a pandemic. The United States is now in a much better situation, with fewer hospitalizations and deaths – and vaccines to prevent serious illness from front -line health workers, say.
However, they add that, as Americans become more distant from the first days of Covid, it can be difficult to remember what it looked like – especially for those who treated patients.
“Everyone was worried, doctors, nurses,” Dr. Matthew Sims, director of infectious diseases for Corewell Health, a non -profit health care system located in Michigan. “It was absolutely crazy, and I think people forgot. I think people forgot the horror of what Covid was at first and, I mean, it was a situation of horror.”
A nurse bearing personal protective equipment (PPE) speaks to colleagues from the outside of an intensive care unit (USI) while she takes care of a covid-19 patient in Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, California, December 18, 2020.
APU Gomes / AFP via Getty Images
Change people quickly
Shriner said that one of the speed indicators with which the world was changing was the evolution of hospital meetings on the virus and how to prepare when information started to get out of China.
“Meetings took place in a very small and small meeting room. No one wore masks or anything,” she said. “And then as things started to evolve, and we saw that it happened, that the rooms started to grow, then we started to meet masks, then, finally, it became virtual.”
Shriver recalled that the situation was “very terrifying” at the personal and professional level.
“If we knew how difficult it was going to be, I think we would have been even more disturbed,” she said.
Sims said that it had become clear how much patients could be infected in March 2020. Shortly after the WHO said a world pandemic, he came in a quarter of work that week as the infectious doctor turning to the hospital.
“We had two confirmed cases admitted at that time. At the end of the week I spent, we had more than 100 confirmed cases,” he told ABC News. “It was absolutely devastating for the hospital, for the health system as a whole … It was a crazy period.”
The state of hospitals
Sims and Shriner said that the lack of early tests at the time was a source of frustration. Since routine tests were not available, the results have often taken days – or even weeks – to come back.
In addition, hospital laboratories often had to confirm the results with state health departments.
SIM said hospitals had become full, it has sometimes become a race against the stopwatch to try to treat patients.
A patient is removed from an ambulance in the emergency room of a hospital in the city of Navajo Nation Town in Tuba City during the 57-hour curfew, imposed in an attempt to stop the spread of the COVVI-19 virus by the Navajo nation, in Arizona, on May 24, 2020.
Mark Ralston / AFP via Getty Images
“I remember that one of the most devastating cases I saw was a young man, relatively young and young at home,” he said. “A little overweight, I think he was diabetic, but he became super sick, and we were trying to obtain a remdsivir, which was compassionate use at the time”, referring to an antiviral drug approved later to treat COVID-19.
Sims said that the hospital was to call the company manufacturing the drug, tell them about the patient, and then obtain the approval of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use doses on the patient.
“And we obtained approval, then they have to ship it to us,” said Sims. “Everything was dispatched as quickly as possible, but even before he could arrive here, this patient became too sick for even using it, and the patient died. A week before, he was at home with his children, his wife, and this, in a normal state of health, then suddenly obtained this terrible and dead virus.”
As he became clear how contagious the virus was, the hospital staff had to wear masks. Shriner said that she always had a scar or imprint on her nose to have a mask for 18 hours a day.
One of the things she remembers the most was the lack of sound, apart from the machines, whenever she visited the uses.
“As the months progressed, we ended up having six different intensive care units because the patients were so sick,” she said. “We had a lot, many patients who were on fans. You would enter these areas, and it was just a silence. All you heard was the fans that go and saw people in protective equipment all the time.”
To manage the influx of patients, hospitalized and in emergency services, Shriner said that his hospital had stopped all non -urgent surgeries to be able to have additional available doctors.
COVVI-19 vaccines arrive
On December 11, 2020, the FDA granted pfizer-biontech The first authorization to use emergency for a COVVI-19 vaccine for the 16th and over. Three days later, nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first person to receive a COVVI-19 vaccine In the United States, distribution has started.
Shriner and Sims felt a feeling of relief that a tool was finally available to help stem the propagation of the disease.
Shriner said she was the first person in her hospital to receive the COVVI-19 vaccine, even if she didn’t want to be.
The COVVI -19 vaccine is stored at -80 degrees Celsius in the Roseland Community Hospital pharmacy, December 18, 2020, in Chicago.
Images Scott Olson / Getty
“I didn’t want to be the first person. I was perfectly agree to let others go ahead,” she said. “And (the CEO) said to me:” You have to be. “She said,” If you don’t be vaccging, no one else will. “”
Shriner said that the distribution of the vaccine “was a sign of the exit. It was very hope.”
Lessons learned
Sims and Shriner say that COVVI-19 has taught health workers many lessons, including how to quickly share information, how to diligently monitor diseases and how to increase the capacity of health care.
Sims said that another precious discovery was better communicated to the public than information during a public health crisis can change quickly.
An example is that the first studies would come out suggesting that some drugs could help treat patients. Finally, additional information would be published proving the opposite.
“We learned and we learned in such a rapid way (way), it was difficult to communicate,” he said. “I think that if we had a failure, it was that in this quick push to communicate.”
Sims noted how it created a certain uncertainty.
“We have not put the message across enough so that some of what we learn can be wrong, and we will tell you about learning,” said Sims. “We are going to tell you what we know now that it may not be the same thing we know tomorrow.”
Shriner added that staying and locking orders were difficult for people and, if another pandemic occurs, she hopes there would be different decisions about what should be locked.
“Perhaps we have no locking rules and such strict isolation rules,” she said. “You know, the outdoor restaurant has become a good thing. You know, think of all home delivery services have really taken off. And so, many good things came out, but they were hardly won.”