The frightening speed with which the condition of people infected with coronavirus worsens, and completely sudden deaths shock even experienced doctors and nurses who do not yet understand how to stop such a sudden deterioration in the condition of patients.
Patients “look good, feel good, and then … if you turn your back on them, they don’t react anymore,” says nurse Diana Torres, who works at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Torres complains that in recent days she has developed paranoia associated with fear of sudden death of patients. Not only the elderly or the seriously ill die. This, according to doctors, is now happening with young and healthy people.
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While on duty, nurse Lori Douglas, working in a hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a young woman suddenly died. Douglas says that after 34 years of working in the hospital, she has long had a kind of intuition: a nurse usually feels which of the patients may die and who will recover soon. But now she does not understand why people die so unexpectedly.
“Last week, she planned her wedding, and this week her family will bury her,” says the nurse, referring to the deceased patient.
When patients are hospitalized, it does not say anything about a possible fatal outcome: people breathe freely and are able to have small talk, an ambulance doctor working in the New York Presbyterian Hospital says. The doctor, who agreed to talk with Reuters on condition of anonymity, says that many of these people can begin to choke in a few hours and find themselves on ventilators.
“It’s scary that there is no pattern here,” the doctor notes.
Doctors observe a similar development in many hospitals – COVID-19, a severe respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, has already caused the death of more than 83 thousand people worldwide.
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The rapid deterioration of patients is likely the result of an “over-reaction” of the immune system to the fight against the virus, says Dr. Otto Young, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California Medical Center in Los Angeles.
The so-called “cytokine storm” occurs when the body produces too many immune cells. Cytokines appearing in the blood – peptide molecules that activate immunity – cause high blood pressure, lead to lung damage and organ failure.
“This is madness”
Emily Muzyka, a 25-year-old nurse working in a New York hospital, says that the “turning point” for her was the situation last week, when a relatively healthy 44-year-old patient suddenly needed mechanical ventilation.
51-year-old Anik Jessdanoon, an Associated Press reporter who never complained about his health and ran a 83 marathon, unexpectedly died last week from COVID-19. This was posted on Facebook by his cousin Prida Mulpramuk.
Jessunun at first did not need hospitalization. After infection, he began to recover, his tests were in order, and his lungs, as his doctor testified during a visit to the hospital in late March, were clean. However, on April 1, the journalist suddenly became worse: he was taken to the emergency department, where Jessdunun died 13 hours later.
A nurse at the Mount Sinai Intensive Care Unit repeatedly witnessed a patient’s kidney failure. For many of them, doctors intravenously injected heparin, a medicine that prevents blood coagulation.
“It makes me crazy how quickly they get sick … We’re actually trying to figure out how to treat them,” the nurse says.
According to doctors, patients who require mechanical ventilation cannot always be saved.
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According to Dr. Craig Smith, chief surgeon at Columbia University Medical Center, intubated patients spend an average of about two weeks on ventilators. An ambulance doctor from the Presbyterian Hospital testifies that the mortality rate of intubated patients with COVID-19 is above average when compared with people who are placed under mechanical ventilation machines for other diseases. The exact numbers are still unknown – in the midst of the epidemic chaos is happening in many hospitals, and doctors do not have time to keep statistics.
Doctors sometimes have to experiment with drugs whose effectiveness in the treatment of patients with COVID-19 has not been proven – including using the drug hydroxychloroquine, which is usually used to treat malaria.
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