These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
After our first positive test, several nurses had symptoms who were there on that day, who were not wearing the right equipment. We didn’t test them. I haven’t been tested. If you don’t have a fever and you’re not a high-risk person, then you’re not getting tested.
You would never feel good about sending a person like this home with no intervention. If they have an underlying medical disease, and if they have other medical problems, chances are if their chest X-ray looks like that they’ll probably get worse. There’s really nothing we can offer them. We don’t have the ability to monitor them in the hospital. We’re trying to free up our beds because these people are coming back. That first patient I mentioned was intubated, they’re dying right now. That’s what you’re waiting for. Next week or the week after, we’re worried that every patient that comes back is going to be like that.
This has been the longest week of my life. The ER was inundated with calls with people who thought they had COVID. It was packed in the lobby and the lines were not organized. Staff walked in along with patients and visitors. It’s calmed down in the last few days. It’s been a ghost town because there are no unnecessary procedures happening. No extra visitors. Yet everyone is still stressed.
