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Dozens of hospital workers test positive for coronavirus

NBC Boston reports both Brigham and Women's and Mass. General each reported more than 40 Covid-19 diagnoses among its workers, while Boston Medical Center reported 15.

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this is a disaster. we're at the very start of the pandemic, and our healthcare workers are already down for the count. i've been raising money on gofundme to purchase PPE from china to donate to hospitals, but it seems like it's too late.

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As I've said before, family member worked on one known positive patient, I'm sure there's more and I'm sure this thing is already at my house. Face Shields and masks must come home each night as the supply is low. Covered in germs.

None of us show any symptoms, we are all considered "essential employees" due to our fields and two in the house must still go to work each day.

Our concern is if one of us in the house comes down with symptoms, the rest will need to be quarantined. At this point we're just basically waiting for it to happen.

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Please keep fund raising for PPE - the healthcare workers on the job still need it desperately, as do those working in nursing homes and other healthcare facilities!

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the confirmed cases count.

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why BIDMC and its neighborhood hospitals are not reporting. Certainly they must have staff that have tested positive as well.

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There is a call from nation wide hospitals not to resuscitate anyone with covid 19 to cut down on hospital employees from getting the disease. Boston hospitas were not in the article but I can imagine they are thinking about it too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/25/coronavirus-patients-do...

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There have been ongoing discussions about the utility of resuscitation in covid-19. Under best circumstances it will take several minutes to correctly apply all of the necessary protective equipment to reduce your chances of getting aerosolized virus on your face, hands or body. That's with just one person, let alone multiple people that are generally required to resuscitate someone. There is also a high risk for dislodging your protective equipment while performing CPR, thereby risking infecting yourself.

Assuming the person is not already on a breathing machine, getting them onto that breathing machine is considered extremely high risk for aerosol generation and for now is being performed with PAPRs (powered air purifying respirators) which take a long time to apply correctly (think 10 minutes) while the person is not breathing.

Assuming the arrest occurred in the setting of inadequate breathing support on maximal ventilator settings, performing CPR could be considered futile and expose a significant number of people to the virus as it was respiratory failure that lead to the arrest and trying drugs to treat the heart won't reverse the respiratory faiulre. Sudden cardiac events have also been reported as well, virtually none of which have responded to conventional resuscitation efforts which raises the question of how much risk people should be exposed to for a potentially futile attempt.

There are no easy answers and generally the recommendation has been to individualize the approach to each person. However, the sentiment seems to be, if someone arrests all the protective gear goes on first and if that takes 5-10 minutes it significantly reduces someone's chances for survival under the best circumstances.

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Thanks for the reply! I understand.

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