Covid-19 and New Zealand Lockdown
The past few days have been very weird and stressful for New Zealand. We didn't know what to expect when the lockdown for the whole country was announced and now we are in a full lockdown mode.
Us doctors and hospitals have been preparing for this though. We have been planning what we will do and won’t do, what level of healthcare we will provide for what levels of COVID-19 contagion. Once the lockdown began on Wednesday the 25th of March, we stopped performing all elective non-urgent surgeries. Regular follow-up appointments and non-urgent appointments were either cancelled or done via telehealth.
Patients with urgent needs like cancer or heart or stroke are still being attended to. New Zealanders with urgent healthcare requirements will be looked after, so there should be no concerns from the public. With the lockdown in place, everyone with non-urgent procedures is asked to stay home so they, as well as healthcare providers, aren’t put at risk of COVID-19 exposure and transmission. If us doctors and other healthcare providers are sick with the virus, who will be there to treat patients?
At this stage, we expect to deal with urgent medical conditions and preventable conditions to avoid loss of life. However, if hospitals are overfilled with COVID-19 patients and have a limited number of healthcare staff, then things might be different. This is why strict lockdown measures are in place. They are the only way to prevent our hospitals from being overrun by an extremely large number of patients.
Last week I also had a flu vaccine and asked most of my patients to have one too. This will not provide immunity against Covid-19 and won’t affect how our body will respond to the virus. However it will help avoid the flu, so doctors can easily assess us for COVID-19 symptoms, which are very similar.
Throughout the world, many doctors are dying because of COVID-19. The virus spread with doctors and other health professionals in countries like China, Italy, America and Spain. It's very likely that some of my friends in New Zealand and the rest of the world might not live through this pandemic and I may never see them again. Health professionals have a higher risk of death during pandemics, because of being exposed to numerous people in hospitals who may have viruses without knowing it.
Among doctors, we have been talking about prevention equipment and what should be used. With equipment longevity being short and the amount needed (as it needs to be changed and disposed of for every patient), the issue we are facing is that there is not enough protective equipment like masks. This has been proven in Italy and right now in New York. The whole world is scrambling to get a sufficient number of correct protective masks and ventilators.
We are currently receiving slightly mixed messages and directions about what exactly we need to do in the current situation. It is most likely due to not having enough knowledge around Covid-19 where we simply don't know the right answer. There aren’t any studies with 100% results, and in medicine, we require studies which unfortunately take time. During pandemics, we do not have time for long studies, as everything has to be done quickly.
The best way to act right now is to assume that everyone is infected and practice hygiene and self-isolation measures to keep ourselves safe and healthy.
I personally struggle with the thought of whether (or when) I will see my loved ones again. Am I going to see my mom and dad, my brother and his family again? I hope so. We are still in regular contact, but it has been emotionally hard for me. I couldn't bring my parents down to Wellington to stay with me to look after them, because I'm a high-risk person - I may expose them to the virus unwillingly.
A similar situation is happening in America and other parts of the world. Doctors stay separately from their families to protect them. Parents can’t see or hug their children or can only see them through glass doors. It's devastating and causing so much stress to people who are already under lots of it. I feel like this is the hardest part of being in the medical field. It feels like we’re fighting a long war completely unprepared for it mentally. We don’t ever get trained for things like this.