On February 11, 2020 the World Health Organization announced an official name for the disease that is causing the current outbreak of coronavirus disease, COVID-19.
This is a Controlled Air Purifying Respirator (CAPR) (click here) used at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett. Nurses and doctors wear the respirator when they have to enter an isolation room. ...“It becomes a whole different skill”
Once the patient was in the unit, Diaz examined him from the next room using what is called a telehealth system, basically a video call that allows a doctor to speak to and see the patient.
From there, a lot of the work was fairly routine. A rotating staff of 20 nurses, three doctors and personnel from every corner of the hospital kept the patient as comfortable as possible. They took his vitals regularly. They gave him an IV to replenish his fluids.
But the gear the medical team had to wear made these basic tasks difficult. There was the respirator helmet, which came with a plastic faceguard. They doubled up on gloves. The whole outfit got so hot that the nurses had to swap out every four hours at the most....
...an experimental antiviral drug called remdesivir.
Remdesivir has been tested in Ebola patients and proved to be safe but not effective against that virus. Researchers have reported some success using it to treat monkeys who have MERS-CoV, which is another coronavirus. China has begun enrolling COVID-19 patients into a clinical trial of the antiviral, which was developed by the pharmaceutical company Gilead (click here).
The patient’s fever went away the day after treatment, and he began feeling better. It is too early to know how well the treatment will do in others, but the results are promising, Diaz said.
“It is only one case,” Diaz said. “It’s the first person in the world who got this medication for novel coronavirus, but it seems to have worked.”...
