The Doctor Will See You Now [Non-Fiction]

Chapter 120: The COVID Series

Work has been super busy.

Our fever ward, which is for admitting patients with fevers or abnormal chest x-rays so they can get their nCoV testing, is full. Aside from massive influxes of patients exposed to nCoV cases or just anxious about having it themselves, this is because there is a clog downstream.

The general wards that receive the patients tested negative for nCoV are also full. This is mainly due to the elderly people that come in with non-nCoV related things taking some time to get better, such as UTIs and chest infections. Sometimes they end up getting complications, such as falling on the ward or choking on their food or getting hospital-acquired infections, prolonging their stay.

Two nursing homes have had outbreaks. Many vulnerable, elderly folks are infected. For those lucky enough to avoid it, they don't actually have a place to go on discharge even if they're fit to leave the hospital. So they stay here. Some get hospital-acquired infections during their wait until their nursing homes have been fully cleaned out. One of our three rehab wards has been converted to the fever ward we're using now so we don't have places to go for those awaiting placement or needing rehab, so they're stuck on the acute ward.

Our ICU is full of nCoV cases so when our forty-year-old diabetic rolls in very ill from an infection and kidney failure, he's not admitted to ICU even though he's a prime candidate. A fifty-year-old man coming in basically comatose because of his bad COPD (a lung condition mainly due to smoking where the airways are chronically narrowed) but otherwise a well functioning baseline is also denied ICU admission.

This is the result of not flattening the curve (as much as we could have). The hospital is overloaded. And those who come in very ill needing ICU care, nCoV-related or otherwise, are not admitted to ICU because we have no beds. And the general wards are also stuffed full.

Hong Kong is into its third wave and, in contrast to the single digits and occasionally ten or twenty cases back in the first and second waves, we are now getting hundreds of cases per day after weeks of zero new cases. Meanwhile, our border remains open and hundreds of thousands of people have government-sanctioned exemptions from quarantine and testing (this has since been tightened somewhat after a study by our university showing the strain of this current outbreak is definitely imported from those who are exempt and there was public outrage). Mainlanders are still crashing through the border to use our healthcare willy-nilly.

A mainlander last week rushed through the border and immediately to our A+E. He's a heavy smoker so he's always a bit chesty. He says he hasn't actually got any symptoms but wanted a checkup. In A+E. During a pandemic. By crossing the border and using the public transport whilst being potentially a carrier of deadly disease.

Another mainlander came into our A+E having been discharged from a neighbouring hospital just twelve hours earlier for an infection, which had cleared. He says he had a fever. So, the anxious A+E admitted him immediately. He had no documented fever in A+E. He had documented no fever on admission to our ward. The next day, when his resident rounded him, he says he never had a fever at all, just a headache, but claims A+E told him he had a fever.

A local man attended a neighbouring hospital and tested positive for nCoV. He refused admission and then refuses to be treated. He then refused to stay in hospital and escaped. The police was called -- but he then surrendered himself afterwards, having run all the way through the hospital and out the front door. Whilst testing positive.

We really don't need disgustingly selfish people like those at these desperate times.