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ofKatja Thorwarth
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shut down
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Corona crisis in the USA: Emergency doctor Lászlo Osváth works at the Lincoln Medical Center in New York and talks about his everyday work and the corona virus.
- Ambulance out New York speaks about the corona pandemic in the USA.
- New York Bronx is a hotspot in times of Corona.
- There is a lack of medical infrastructure.
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Mr. Osváth, I reach you after a 40 hour shift in the emergency room at Lincoln Medical Center in the NY Bronx. Do you always have such long working hours?
Well they are during now Covid-19 extremely long. A shift normally lasts twelve hours, plus around five hours of paperwork. The rest periods are included, but you seldom come to rest here – especially not currently.
What does everyday work look like?
At the weekend we had the usual patients with severe pneumonia. They are tested immediately, but the cases are mostly hopeless. People are far too late, for understandable reasons. The fear of being discovered keeps them from doing so. The largest number are illegal immigrants, without a residence permit, without a job and without any insurance. We have the highest death rate among them.
Coronavirus in New York Bronx: Hardly a patient was tested for Covid-19
The Bronx is one of the corona hotspots, 25% of residents are affected. Were you prepared for the massive outbreak of the pandemic?
We are almost always in an exceptional situation here at Lincoln Medical Center. This is certainly due to the special, social challenges we face in the Bronx have to do. As the pandemic broke out, we had no idea where it was going. I remember when we had an unusually high number of patients with severe pneumonia in January and February. They were cured, but none were tested for Covid-19 *. They all went home to the high-rise housing estates, where most of them live in very cramped conditions. Suddenly rapidly increasing illnesses were reported from individual blocks, sometimes 200 on a single floor. Of Covid-19 became whole New York hit very hard. Here is the center of the pandemic in the US, 50 out of 80 thousand deaths in the USA were New Yorkers – and most of them lived in the Bronx.
Lászlo Osváth was born in Romania in 1954. Both parents were doctors. Since 1988 he has been working in New York at Lincoln Medical Center, Bronx. He volunteers to improve the medical infrastructure in Armenia.
© Peter Göltl, Frankfurt
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How do you explain that?
Virus carriers have been flown in from all over Europe via the airports, but especially from Italy and Spain. The borders were immediately closed on the west coast, but not in the east. It wasn’t that easy here, there were even allegations against itDonald Trump*, he would want to protect the “white” West, ie California, Washington DC, and leave the “colorful” East to its fate for racist reasons. But it seems that nobody in the east wanted to agree to the shutdown, the resistance against it was great. Our hospital was well prepared, but not for this enormous increase. The number of those affected literally skyrocketed.
Corona crisis in the USA: Covid-19 deaths are falling
How do you assess the actions of the government in Washington?
The government has helped with field hospitals, converted the Javits Center, a large hall, into a hospital for 1,000 patients, and the USNS Comfort (a hospital ship) from Virginia docked in Manhattan. We were well equipped with Protective masks and PPE, the preventive full-body equipment for hospital staff. But, more importantly, they have medical staff, especially from the south, according to them New York brought to compensate for the chronic shortage of skilled workers. Outstanding, professional staff, nurses, interns, nurses. Professionally excellent and with a high work ethic. These skilled workers are paid by the government, very well paid. For example, a nurse goes home on $ 12,000 a week. I’m afraid what will happen when they are withdrawn in two weeks. Now it has calmed down a bit, the top of the wave is over, and deaths are decreasing.
Not everyone in the US has health insurance. Is that why you have to turn people away?
We in Lincoln Center took care of everyone, regardless of whether they were insured or not, and regardless of their legal status. Unfortunately, there are so-called “comorbidities”, ie diseases that result from Covid-19 and pre-existing conditions such as diabetes. All addicts are also extremely risky and have contributed to the large number of deaths. But we also have a high success rate – many patients left the hospital healthy.
Corona crisis in the USA: The coronavirus is more than a flu
Some claim that Corona is nothing more than a severe flu. What do you say as a practitioner in the trouble spot?
The Coronavirus is more than the flu *. I share the view of Luc Montagnier, the Nobel Prize winner who has the HIV Virus discovered. Who claims the coronavirus contains part of the HIV genome. Time will tell whether it is true or not. That is the expertise of a specialist whom I trust.
How does your work in the Bronx differ from the work of other doctors, for example in Boston or California?
The work is the same everywhere, including the problems, for example the constant struggle with the infrastructure. There is an acute shortage of staff here and there. Almost half of the nurses are absent per shift because we cannot fill the positions. There is a lack of ambulances everywhere, instead of 15 ambulances there are often only six to seven. It has already happened that I had to drive a patient to the CT myself.
A Tiger in New York Bronx Zoo got infected of Corona Virus by an attendant who wasn’t showing symptoms
This 4 year Tiger (Nadia) and along with 6 other tigers & lions are also fallen sick#news #update #animals #covid19 #Newyork #zoo #USA #tiger #coronavirus #WorldHealthDay pic.twitter.com/8TUcrroiC4
— fashioncentral (@fashion_central) April 7, 2020
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Do you have a forecast of how things will continue where you work?
The fever curve of thepandemic will flatten out, the numbers will go down. But there are also risks that we cannot assess, e.g. one hears that some tiger cats in the Bronx zoo are sick with Covid-19. If that turns out to be a fact, then we have a problem. The human-animal barrier would have been broken, and the virus had completely different ways of spreading. Tigers are cats. Imagine such a scenario. Domestic cats as coronavirus hosts? Lifting the restrictions too early can also lead to a rise again. The precautionary measures are therefore important: protective masks, hand washing, keep your distance. Sure, at a certain point the economy has to be restarted, nobody wants to wait months.
Katja Thorwarth conducted the interview.
* fr.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital central editorial team.
Rubriklistenbild: © pictu re alliance/dpa/Marl Lennihan
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