IJust ten days ago, only half of the patients seen by this 46-year-old in-house doctor at Beth Israel, one of the Mount Sinai hospitals in Manhattan, had COVID-19.
Last week, the proportion rose to three quarters, and is now around 85 to 90%.
“We have stopped seeing ordinary patients,” he said in a videoconference interview. “So the hospital is full of coronavirus patients.”
“We have more patients than our ordinary capacity,” he says. “But we had already increased the number of beds in anticipation.”
The wave at the facility he works in is similar to the one in New York City, which has grown from 463 cases diagnosed two weeks ago to more than 36,000 on Monday.
“At the rate that I observe,” said the doctor, “the peak could happen at the weekend or next week.”
Under pressure for two weeks already, Shamit Patel is now preparing for the worst, even if “it is something we hope not to see”.
The worst part is a situation comparable to that of certain regions of Italy, where the health system is unable to take care of all its patients.
“We will have to be a little faster to examine each patient and define the treatment,” he predicts. “We might have to see double or triple the number we usually see.”
But, he worries, “you can’t really go beyond triple and treat effectively.”
“See my family again”
In addition to caregiver limitations, there is just as much concern about a possible shortage of equipment, particularly the artificial respirators, which state governor Andrew Cuomo and New York mayor Bill de Blasio speak of every day.
“If there is an influx and you only have a limited number of respirators, you cannot ventilate everyone,” said the doctor. “And from there you have to choose.”
“There is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety, but there is not much I can do about it,” said Peter Liang, a gastroenterologist who has been redeployed to treat patients with COVID-19.
“So I’m trying to focus on what I control,” he says. “Take care of my patients, support my colleagues and take care of myself so that I can see my family every night.”
“It’s hard to know that each morning may be the last time I see my wife and two-month-old baby for several days,” said the doctor at Manhattan Veterans Hospital, who knows he is “at high risk” of contracting the disease.
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