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“ ‘What do I have on? What is this? It’s a garbage bag.’ ”
A calm has befallen New York City’s empty streets. Inside the city’s hospitals, however, there are scenes of organized chaos.
“A lot of our patients are presenting with severe respiratory distress,” Joshua Rosenberg, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases at The Brooklyn Hospital Center, told a CBS crew, describing health-care workers’ attempts to deal with the influx of patients suffering from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. “They were fine and they had some cough, and then they weren’t fine.”
He said one patient who had no underlying health conditions experienced respiratory failure and kidney damage. “He’s relatively young. This gentleman, I believe, is in his early 50s. He’s requiring 100% oxygen and a lot of air to keep his lungs inflated.” Most of the patients were black men and on ventilators, he added. Another doctor said, “We’re seeing a lot of younger, healthier patients.”
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Kay, a nurse at the hospital who did not want to give her last name for fear of reprisals from relatives of patients who are not allowed to visit their loved ones, told CBS reporter David Begnaud, who was covered in a hazmat decontamination suit and large face shield. “It’s like something out of the Twilight Zone. I don’t think any of us going through it will ever be the same.”
“I’d like a mask like yours,” she said. “We should all have masks like yours, and that white suit you have on? What do I have on? What is this?” Begnaud said it looked like she was wearing a garbage bag over her scrubs. Kay replied, “It is a garbage bag.” Another nurse said that she had many of the symptoms of coronavirus, and came back to work after recovering.
Joshua Rosenberg wore ski goggles and changed into a replaceable gown to switch a patient’s breathing tube. “This is serious,” he said. “People are dying from this. Old people. Young people. It is lethal.” At least 27 COVID-19 patients had died at that hospital as of last Friday, Begnaud said. After the broadcast, he said his team disinfected his mask and sent it to Kay.
Joshua Rosenberg, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases at The Brooklyn Hospital Center, told CBS News, ‘A lot of our patients are presenting with severe respiratory distress. They were fine and they had some cough, and then they weren’t fine.’
CBS News
The Joint Commission, a nonprofit organization that accredits over 22,000 U.S. health-care services and programs, said in a statement that it “supports allowing staff to bring their own standard face masks or respirators to wear at work when their health-care organizations cannot routinely provide access to protective equipment that is commensurate with the risk to which they are exposed.”
“Hospitals must conserve personal protective equipment (PPE) when these items are in short supply to protect staff who perform high-risk procedures,” it added. “The degree to which privately-owned masks and respirators will increase the protection of health-care workers is uncertain, but the balance of evidence suggests that it is positive.”
“ ‘We’re seeing a lot of younger, healthier patients.’ ”
As of Tuesday morning, 3,485 of the 10,923 U.S. fatalities were in New York City, surpassing the number of people who died here on 9/11, but the rise in deaths related to COVID-19 is showing early signs of leveling off. Some 130,689 of the 368,449 confirmed cases in the U.S. were in New York State, according to John Hopkins University. There were 1,362,936 confirmed cases worldwide.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday it’s changing its policy on masks. It now recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings such as pharmacies or supermarkets. It said asymptomatic transmission was “new evidence.” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that the state could be reaching the apex, as the rise in deaths appear to be leveling off.
“Have we saved everyone? No,” Cuomo said at a press briefing on Monday. “But have we lost anyone because we didn’t have a bed or we didn’t have a ventilator, or we didn’t have health-care staff? No.” He also said that New York City did not need additional ventilators. Medical-grade N95 surgical mask masks are in short supply at hospitals across the city, health professionals say.
In the early days of the coronavirus in the U.S., the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Surgeon General all asked the public not to wear face masks unless they were unwell or caring for someone who was sick. But all three have since reversed that position. New York City remains the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.
“It’s a garbage bag,’ Kay, a nurse at The Brooklyn Hospital, said.
CBS News
