COVID (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 2
The response to post #1 was gratifying, so I’ll make this a daily digest...of life inside @ucsf/@ucsfhospitals as we begin managing growing # of #COVID19 pts. Pic below: a few principles I'll follow for these posts. Today's issues follow...(1/10)
The response to post #1 was gratifying, so I’ll make this a daily digest...of life inside @ucsf/@ucsfhospitals as we begin managing growing # of #COVID19 pts. Pic below: a few principles I'll follow for these posts. Today's issues follow...(1/10)
a)Very mild uptick in volume today: 8 patients in hospital with confirmed #COVID19 (2 in ICU), 18 w/ tests pending. Other COVID+ patients doing OK as outpatients. Italy shows how bad this can get, and NY seems a few days ahead of us in terribleness (2/10)
b)Everybody with cough/flu symptoms feels like they have COVID. Yet our positive test rate (we're testing only patients with symptoms) is just 3-5% – meaning most pts don’t have it. For reasons I don’t get, Stanford’s rate is higher (3/10)
c)Testing: still doing 80 tests/day @ucsf. With Herculean effort @czbiohub (converting research lab into clinical in record time), should be able to ramp up to ~300/d tomorrow, maybe 1000/d soon, which will be huge bit.ly/2UlG1hr Thanks Biohub, Joe DeRisi & team! (4/10)
c-2) Big irony: what limits our testing may not be machines, people…but the lowly SWAB, a glorified Q-tip. (But Q-tips won’t do). A big national shortage. Go figure: there’s a nat'l emergency stockpile, inc. swabs. We’re waiting/hoping for shipment wapo.st/3dhbwC7 (5/10)
d)PPE shortage dire–limiting MDs seeing pts to one (& subbing inpt televisits), no pt visitors, reusing PPE if safe. A tension all over: areas in which evidence-based guidelines say surgical mask/eye protect good enough, but some feel more secure w/ N95. Working thru it… (6/10)
e)Big N95 shortage, @ucsf & everywhere. One new source of them for us: leftovers from CA wildfires. Wow!
f)Bay Area’s “stay in place” order went statewide today. Seems right. When this is over, let’s rejoice if we “did too much” rather than mourning “we did too little” (7/10)
f)Bay Area’s “stay in place” order went statewide today. Seems right. When this is over, let’s rejoice if we “did too much” rather than mourning “we did too little” (7/10)
g)My day today was dominated by Zoom…
g-2). My vote for workplace meme for COVID era: “If you could put yourself on mute, that would be appreciated.” Always reminds me of my wife @katiehafner’s great @nytimes piece on conference calls: nyti.ms/3b1MTXT (8/10)
g-2). My vote for workplace meme for COVID era: “If you could put yourself on mute, that would be appreciated.” Always reminds me of my wife @katiehafner’s great @nytimes piece on conference calls: nyti.ms/3b1MTXT (8/10)
g-3) We held fascinating @ucsfmedicine grand rounds on science/clinical/epi of COVID. 3500 people joined by Zoom (about 50x our usual crowd). I was the host, but got locked out of Zoom for the first 5 (terrifying) minutes. Will post this extraordinary session tomorrow... (9/10)
g-4) In the Life-Goes-On (Oddly) category, today was my dear dad’s 90th birthday. Pic is my wife, sisters, their families, my 3 kids & daughter-in-law... and mom (84) & dad, alone in Boca. Sweet but very sad. I’m sure everybody is having similar experiences (10/10)
More tomorrow
More tomorrow
