Transcript:
Hello I'm Dr. Hamilton-Stubbs and I am doing a Facebook live today on the coronavirus and COVID-19. This program is dedicated to my office staff. I received a call today that the person is not going to be able to join us because of the loss of a relative to COVID-19. I want to encourage everyone to please practice social distancing.
One of the things that's happening is we don't see the faces of all the people who are dying or being hospitalized. In Virginia alone we've had our hospitals overflowing with patients who've been infected by the virus, but because we're social distancing we don't really see that. I have colleagues that work in administration who've been called into the emergency room to take care of the common illnesses like heart attacks or strokes or asthma exacerbations because the ER staff is overwhelmed by the people who are coming in with SARS-COV2. Earlier I asked an infectious disease specialist to give us some comments for a booklet that I wrote which is available on our website at www.drhamiltonstubbs.com/covid19. I wanted the doctor just to review a couple pages about infectious disease. The message I got back was we are swamped. We have so many patients we just can hardly stay above water. But we don't see this and so we think that COVID-19 is something that is far far away and it won't affect us. But I'm here today to tell you that I am very sad to hear about the loss of someone who was so close to one of our employees and I'm asking you to please protect yourself and to protect others.
The list of symptoms of COVID-19 has expanded. If you are around someone in a large crowd, sometimes you don't even know where you could have gotten exposed. But 2 to 14 days after exposure you could develop some of the symptoms that are associated with COVID-19. For example, fever of 101 or greater in an adult is a sign that you may have been infected. If you have problems with confusion or fatigue. A cough, a dry cough, that lasts one to two weeks. Shortness of breath, fatigue, tightness in your chest, GI symptoms like diarrhea or vomiting. These are all considered part of the symptom complex of COVID-19 and an unusual symptom is the loss of your ability to smell. If you have any of those you may want to contact your health professional to see if you can get tested.
Testing is still limited in Virginia because we don't have enough test kits for everyone who wants a test to get tested. We are moving in that direction, but for now we don't have enough for everyone so we are only able to test people who have signs and symptoms or who have been exposed to the virus. There's two typesof testing available across the country one test is looking at viral particles and this is taking a tissue specimen. The most common one is a nasal swab where the health provider is taking the swab longer than a q-tip and going into the nostrils way in the back to try to get some of that tissue where the virus may have attached. The SARS COV2 virus attaches to mucous membranes. That specimen has to be processed and then they will look for evidence of virus particles. If the test is positive that means that there is an infection. The other test looks for antibodies. Antibodies take a while for the virus for the body to make so we get exposed we mount an immune response and part of that immune response is the making of antibodies and there are different types of antibodies. So this test is not going to tell if you are currently infected. It is more appropriate at telling if you've had a past infection; so there are negative test results. For example if you have a virus particle test the swab and the specimen is not a good sample or processed correctly, the test could come back as a false negative. If you have the antibody test and you are tested too soon, the test can come back as a false negative because your body hasn't had a chance to mount an antibody response. So if you are having some mild symptoms your physician or health provider, nurse practitioner, PA may recommend that you stay home and hydrate take care of yourself at home. Your symptoms should resolve within 10 to 14 days or at least start to get mild. If they exacerbate get worse or they're not following that course or getting mild over 10 days, then you need to go back to your health care provider and see if you need additional help or medical care. There's no FDA approved medication for the treatment of COVID-19. There is a medication called remdesivir which is an intravenous antiviral that has been tested in animal models and found to have some positive benefit against infections related to SARS-COV2. The ebola virus which we experienced some a couple years back. It's effective against that in animal models and for an earlier SARS virus and also for the middle eastern respiratory syndrome virus. So there's some thinking that this medicine remdesivir will be effective against the coronavirus that's causing the current pandemic.
So when the government starts to reopen what should you do? The association for the Infectious Disease Society of America, which is an organization of about 12 000 infectious disease specialists, some of them are health providers, epidemiologists, public health experts, came out with a statement on May 8 saying that we should follow the national public health experts and the Washington Post interviewed three of them and asked them what would you do during this reopening period. None of them said they would go back to life as usual. They all plan to continue with practicing some of the recommendations to decrease the spread of the coronavirus, wearing a mask. This is still essential. The virus can spread from just talking, but if you are in a group and people are talking loudly or singing, this spreads the virus in greater numbers a viral particle and a little farther. Wear a mask. If you're going to a store, look to see do the employees have on a mask and are they practicing social distancing in the store. The infectious disease specialists that were interviewed said they would not go into a store if the workers aren't wearing a mask or if they aren't social distancing practiced in that facility. If you want to go to a restaurant, eating out on a patio where there's good breeze or circulation is safer than if you go inside. The restaurant where they may not have good ventilation or the ability to clear out the virus or they're using an air conditioning system that may be spreading a virus instead of filtering. It's still safer to just order your meals and eat them at home, but if you want to go out experts are saying eat outside in a patio. If you want to practice some of your physical activities like golfing, it's recommended that you just go golfing with people that you know in a small group where you are outside. I personally would say wear a mask. Everyone in the group should wear a mask and don't socialize at the clubhouse if it's open. These are a few of the recommendations that are made by social by experts regarding how to stay safe as we open up our economy and if you are in need of testing and you want to know where can you get tested especially if you don't have insurance that will cover the test, in Virginia, you can go to the Virginia Department of Health website and look for the place where you can input your zip code and you will find the public health locations where you can have testing. Testing is being done across Virginia in different counties, different health districts, and this is something where you should really contact your health department and make yourself available to this free service if you are in need. So again I'm encouraging to you to be safe, to be wise.
I thank you for your attention. I thank God for his mercy and the opportunity to talk with you today. This is the end of my talk may God have mercy on us all.