Dr. Tanzib Hossain is working on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City. He is seeing first-hand the devastating impact it’s having on patients and the monumental challenges facing the health-care system.
Dr. Tanzib Hossain describes what doctors in New York are seeing in hospitals as the city becomes the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. 4:30
The first wave hit last week. The ER at NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn was flooded with people all showing the same symptoms: cough, fever, lungs filled with pus.
A week later came the second wave. Many of those same patients were getting worse, said Dr. Tanzib Hossain, a pulmonary and critical care physician dealing with the COVID-19 crisis at the hospital.
It’s a heartbreaking situation that’s playing out in hospitals across New York City, he said.
“This is … the scary part for physicians in the emergency department. All of the patients that came in, a full five days in, they’re all, to put it in the clearest way, they’re dropping like flies,” he said.
As of Wednesday night, he said, none of the patients who’d been put on a ventilator at the hospital had survived and recovered, though one was taken off Thursday morning and remains in care.
Many people who contract COVID-19 experience less severe symptoms and are able to recover at home.
However, in New York’s hospitals, some patients are on ventilators for prolonged periods and most have not improved in any significant capacity, Hossain said.
And it’s not just the elderly who are falling gravely ill. Hossain has seen first-hand that adults of any age can experience COVID-19’s most severe effects.
“I think that’s what was alarming,” he said.
That is the reality on the front lines in New York, which has become the epicentre of the coronavirus outb