Life In A Blender Family Medicine: Medical Headlines – Coronavirus / COVID-19 Update

Multiple area hospitals are now providing free telehealth screenings that allow patients to be screened, and to provide further information and offer a specific place for the patient to go for additional COVID-19 testing if deemed necessary by the virtual screening. For public safety and staff protection, hospitals and other facilities have set up additional separate sites for the testing that are not at the hospital.

Soon, a point of contact, 5 minute testing method is on the way as well.

“Abbott has received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the fastest available molecular point-of-care test for the detection of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), delivering positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes. What makes this test so different is where it can be used: outside the four walls of a traditional hospital such as in the physicians’ office or urgent care clinics.”

»Detect Covid-19 In As Little As 5 Minutes

A recent article in Nature Medicine explained that scientists believe that the COVID-19 Coronavirus originated from a non-human and then jumped to a human host (much like Swine flu). Their studies lead them to believe that it was not engineered in a lab based on the genetic sequence. Don’t despair if you’re a conspiracy theorist. Though the Chinese didn’t create it, they still could’ve been harboring it and then somehow it got out. We really have no idea what animal the virus came from. People have asked me if it came from a bat, rat, meerkat, pangolin, or some other animal. We just really don’t know for sure.

»CDC Death rate for COVID-19 as of mid-March 2020

This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged ≥85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged ≤19 years.

Remember, the coronavirus is not the Black Death Plague. It is a weaker flu virus and it isn’t as smart or adaptable as influenza. Regardless of what the government tells you about how bad it could get, it remains to be seen if this will be more severe than the H1N1/Swine Flu epidemic 10 years ago in which the lives of 13,000 Americans were lost. It could surpass that epidemic, but it is unlikely to become as destructive as influenza will be this season. The CDC projects that Influenza will cause 45 million illness and 45-60,000 deaths this season. We need to turn down the panic and hysteria, continue to practice safe and common sense hygiene, along with social distancing to protect the most vulnerable.

So let’s all do our part to lessen the impact of this disease and…

Keep Calm and Stay Well!