Emergency medicine in Southern California. Hospital is over 100% capacity with 5-15 holds in our 20-30 bed ER. Covid patients in rooms with only a curtain because were out of negative pressure rooms. 1-6 code blues from someone dying per 9 hour shift.
I do not think flu has arrived yet. A standard is to not test for influenza. Diagnosis of influenza-like illness is more realistic of cases. The flu swabs I have been ordering have mostly been negative, and my rapid PCR does both COVID and Influenza A & B. We had a late flu season last year as well. Anecdotally, I didn’t start seeing a lot of it until early January through March. I suspect the same this year.
Yes. I’m not getting the vaccine either. I also watched someone in their early 40’s die 16 hours ago.
Posts like this do more harm than good. I’m an ER provider in Southern California at work now balls deep in COVID. Frontline workers are doing what we can and I’ll still protect your first amendment right, despite the consequences were now seeing with the entire place over capacity and half the department with Covid pneumonia admits and only a curtain to separate us. We can do better than this.
Better yet, make it 100
This is probably a poorly referenced “batch testing” that we sometimes use. 10 samples are tested together and if they are negative, all individuals are presumed negative. If there is a positive, then they are retested individually and it’s usually only done in screening samples, but not usually diagnostic. It’s to save reagent, which we have a shortage of.
The ER two blocks from there is overwhelmed and overrun with COVID. People are still in the ER who have been admitted before Christmas, sitting in rapid screening areas. There was conversation about putting together ethnics committees about who gets the remaining ventilators and BiPAP. Other local hospitals are doing the same. It’s no excuse for health officials to enforce laws that don’t make sense, but I also get why that community is on edge, especially with the multi-generational households in Covina.