more from Harlem

This morning's report from Harlem has a few more interesting facts. It seems that it is still taking 5-7 days for COVID test results to come back. My son reports that test results don't matter at this point, because they have gotten quite good at spotting COVID patients by looking that the patient's lab results, chest xray, and vital signs. He reports that nearly every patient who comes in has COVID.

Last night saw 5 patients die in the ED of COVID.

One patient who came in had been stabbed in the arm, but had an O2 sat of 76% and a fever of over 100F. He refused a COVID test and left after being stitched up. He likely has it, but we will likely never know for sure.

A couple of other factoids:
People with COVID are having coagualtion issues- they either have too many clots in the blood (called DIC) or they have to few, and whenever the hospital staff tries to secure an IV, the patient turns into a bloody mess. This is one of the reasons why the presence of elevated D Dimer is predictive of patient mortality.

The other thing that COVID is doing is triggering high blood sugar (HHS and DKA) in diabetics. For some reason, this disease really targets people with blood sugar issues.

With all of that, my son reports that they can see a definite reduction in patient volume and death. The worst of it appears to be over, and it looks like NYC is over the hump. Hopefully we will see a drastic reduction within a couple of weeks.