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 After seeing 10,000 new cases a day become the norm across the state
in July, many of those on the frontlines are frustrated with the
apparent inability of local, state, and federal governments to
coordinate an adequate response. They are equally aghast with what
appears to be the reluctance or refusal of many Floridians to honor
safety precautions to stop the spread of coronavirus.
“I know, and my colleagues know, that we’re putting a Band-Aid on a
problem, we’re supporting people as best we can to get them through,
but the real fight happens outside,” said Dr. Eric Knott, a
pulmonary and critical care fellow working in three of Miami’s
largest hospitals. “If you can’t stop the spread, all of my work is
for nothing.”
For Miami doctors, concerns about the virus far surpass those
stirred up by even the largest hurricanes.
"A hurricane tends to be a sort of finite amount, and this is
infinite," said Dr. Mark Supino, an attending physician in Jackson
Memorial Hospital's emergency department.
Many healthcare workers and union leaders were critical of Miami’s
reopening several weeks after the number of cases of the novel
coronavirus first began rising in early March.
On Friday, state health officials reported a total of 402,312 cases
across Florida, with 135 new deaths bringing the total to more than
5,600.
While the death toll in South Florida has not approached that of New
York City, an early epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, hospital beds
and intensive care units across the region have filled to capacity,
and in some cases surpassed it.
At Jackson Memorial Hospital, the largest facility in the region,
officials have called in hundreds of additional medical workers as
employees have fallen sick and had to stay home or be hospitalized.
An auditorium was sealed and prepared for COVID-positive patients
with a negative pressure system to limit the air flow to prevent new
infections.
“In 10 years of medicine I never had to put another nurse on life
support, I never had to worry about my co-workers dying,” said Kevin
Cho Tipton, a critical care nurse practitioner who works at one of
Miami's largest public hospitals. “It’s been emotionally very
challenging, physically very challenging.”
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Among the most difficult and stressful parts of the job are the sheer number of
ICU patients.
Healthcare workers must constantly keep tabs on the vital organs of patients on
ventilators, and many of the sick have to be flipped over and over again to
stave off any complications from lying in one position for a prolonged period.
To do so without risking detaching any of the life support systems can take up
to six people.
The intensity has overwhelmed some.
Jude Derisme, vice president of Service Employees International Union 1199,
which represents 25,000 medical workers across Florida, said the union had to
help get one nurse, a 25-year veteran, off a hospital floor after a “break
down.”
“My fear is that if we don’t find a way to bring these numbers down over the
next two weeks, if they’re worse than these last two weeks, we’re going to be
stretched too thin,” said Martha Baker, a registered nurse and president of
Service Employees International Union 1991, which represents about 5,600 medical
professionals within Miami’s Jackson Health System. “The sad news is that that’s
when patients die.”
While her chapter of the union along with others across Florida have advocated
for more personal protective equipment, better overtime pay, hazard pay, and
worker’s compensation for those waylaid by the virus, they also acknowledged
that medical workers can only do so much against the pandemic.
"This is war, and instead of bullets we’ve got viruses,” Baker said. “If we
don’t find a way to dampen our curve we just keep chasing our tails.”
(Reporting by Zachary Fagenson in Miami; Editing by Frank McGurty and Tom Brown)
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