New York nurse talks of challenges

"The youngest patient I've handled over the past few weeks was just one-month-old. She had tests but I don't know the result, because the next day I began a long-overdue break from work, if only to get better prepared for tougher days ahead," said a nurse from the Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, New York, last Thursday.

As she talked, news emerged that 13 people had died of COVID-19 within the previous 24 hours in the hospital.

The nurse, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, was back at work last Saturday, the day when the New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo warned New Yorkers to gird for a "war" as the state-wide death toll soared by 209 from 519 over the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number to 728. As of Sunday night, that number stood at 965.

"The current situation is: if you are experiencing minor symptoms including coughing, headache and fever, you will not be tested and will be asked to go directly into self-quarantine at home," said the nurse. "We test those who are suffering from chest pain and breathing difficulties-clear signs that the patient's condition has deteriorated.

"On a number of occasions, a patient who had slight discomfort and had been turned away comes back a week later, having developed more severe symptoms," she continued. "On other occasions, they keep coming back out of anxiety."

Largely populated by people of Hispanic, Chinese, Indian and Pakistani origin, Elmhurst is a typical working-class neighborhood where more than two-thirds of the residents were born outside of the United States.

According to the nurse, who lives in Elmhurst, the current coronavirus crisis has hit the neighborhood hard, keeping in mind the limited numbers of means many have for self-quarantine.

"In this part of New York, it was not uncommon for a family of four or even five to be crammed into a one-bedroom apartment. This has made effective self-quarantine difficult, even if one is willing to wear a mask all day long," she said.

John Thomson is a veteran diplomat who was first stationed in Beijing in 1978, to prepare for the normalization of the relationship between China and the US.

"I think shelter at home is a mistake," he said, referring to the widely-adopted practice in the US where the non-critically infected patients are required to be quarantined at home. "We need to have those large, temporary housing areas like they (the Chinese) did in Wuhan. When you put everyone who's not a critical case on effective quarantine and appropriate care, you're able to stretch it out and avoid the most-feared scenario as has happened in Italy."

The hospital nurse, who lives in Elmhurst with her parents and two children, said that the local Chinese population has been hit less hard compared to other ethnic groups.

"The Chinese have generally been more aware of the imminent danger due to the fact that the disease had caused immense suffering in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, before the alarm was raised here," she said. "They, therefore, got better prepared, through limiting their outings at a relatively earlier stage of the outbreak in the US, and through wearing masks long before it was recommended by officials and medical experts in this country."

But that doesn't mean that the Chinese are not feeling the scourge of the pandemic. In fact, the nurse, who's an ethnic Chinese, said that she herself feels the pang of angst from time to time.

"I ask myself: what if one day I go to the hospital and I'm told that there are not enough masks?" she said. Currently, the doctors and nurses are given one N95 mask for a day, which means that very often a mask has to be taken off and worn again more than once a day.

A man who identified himself as a New York State emergency medical technician recently tweeted about his own experience. Feeling unwell, he was told by doctors to stay at home for 14 days without getting a test, while his boss was hoping that he could get back to work within 72 hours given the number of patients who are in desperate need of the service.

The Elmhurst Hospital Center has been getting donations of medical masks and gowns from various sources, including members of the local Chinese-American society. Due to a lack of ventilators at the hospital, two patients have to share one.

Earlier at a press conference, Cuomo blamed "non-compliance" for the worsening of the situation and begged all to stay at home and fulfill their "public health responsibility", to use his words.

"I don't know what's going on in the head of those who had consistently ignored the warnings," said the nurse. "They only need to take a look at what we are going through now."