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Doctor has seen Covid in US crisis

Helen Harvey helen.harvey@stuff.co.nz

When Taranaki emergency department doctor Jeff Rickard left Denver, Colorado, a few weeks ago the second surge of Covid-19 had just arrived.

The majority of Covid patients he was seeing were those who didn’t have the vaccine. And they were sick, really sick.

When the virus first hit the United States city last year the only people who had been vaccinated were healthcare workers, Rickard says.

‘‘And then it started including people who had other co-morbidities, were weaker, older, living in nursing homes. Eventually everybody could get it, even at the grocery store. It was really accessible to everybody.’’

That’s when the hospital started see- ing patient numbers go down, and he could go a couple of shifts without seeing a Covid patient.

‘‘In the beginning of the surge I was seeing multiple Covid patients every day. But we saw our numbers drop considerably.’’

The restrictions eased up and masks were no longer required at the grocery store, for example, if people were vaccinated.

But no-one had to prove they were vaccinated. So there were probably a lot of people who didn’t get the vaccine but stopped wearing their masks, Rickard says.

‘‘That led to the second surge. So, by the time I was leaving, we were back to where we started. And at that point the patients that were coming in were unvaccinated.’’

It was extremely frustrating, he says.

‘‘I always think back to one patient in particular. She was a former nurse who had worked in ICU. Probably 40 something, and she came in. She had a hard time breathing and we had to admit her.’’

Rickard asked her why she hadn’t been vaccinated and she talked about side effects, and how bad she thought they were.

‘‘I’m like yeah, but now you have Covid, and you’re hospitalised.’’

A few people coming to ED had been vaccinated, but they usually had other health issues, and didn’t get very sick, Rickard says.

‘‘But the unvaccinated ones were sick and had to be admitted.’’

The political situation in the US, as well as Covid, helped Rickard and his wife Mary Holloway decide to move to New Zealand.

They talked to people who had visited and they said Kiwis were the nicest people in the world and the country was beautiful.

‘‘And I was definitely overworked and stressed.’’

Their children Zoe, 14, and Noah, 9, haven’t been to school since May and are looking forward to starting next week. And golden retriever Keg’r is happy again after getting very stressed during his flight across the Pacific and being in quarantine.

They’d been watching the Covid situation in New Zealand, he says.

‘‘And thinking that’s the way you do it. Everyone’s on the same page. Before I came I assumed everyone here had a vaccine. But it was only 28/30 per cent. I think it was because you thought you didn’t need it.’’

But, now this surge of the Delta variant has showed the virus could still get into the country, despite all of the restrictions, and raised awareness about the need to get vaccinated.

‘‘It’s OK. It’s safe. It’s protecting you. It’s protecting your families. It’s protecting your communities. I think New Zealand seems like the type of place that will be amenable to saying, OK let’s do that.’’

The whole misinformation campaign is very powerful, but there seems to be more vaccine hesitant than anti-vax, he says.

‘‘I think you have more vaccine hesitancy, which is good because they are people who are probably

more willing to listen to an argument. Those people can be convinced. The antivax are a very radical bunch, whatever you do you’re not going to convince them.’’

That the family have arrived in New Plymouth just as many are predicting Covid is on its way, isn’t lost on him. And working in ED at Taranaki Base Hospital means he could go through it all again.

‘‘Which is why we’re having this conversation,’’ he says. ‘‘There seems to be this fascination when people find I’m from America, where it’s been rampant, and I’m a doctor.’’

He’s had doctors ask what Covid is like, as they have never seen anyone with the virus. ‘‘I didn’t realise that. The shake up of having Covid rearing its head seems to be the impetus that people need to do something. To go from complacency to yes we should do the next step.’’

Looking back to 2020 when the first surge of Covid-19 hit Denver, the hospital he was in set up Covid units.

‘‘Because you couldn’t isolate every patient as much as you would hope to. So we had wards set up just for Covid. There are a lot of hospitals in and around Denver, and we were all pretty much at capacity from ICU on down, even to the point of bringing a patient from one hospital to another, or even [being] sent patients from other states. We had to try and make space. ‘‘It was getting crazy, but we managed.’’ Working at ED in Taranaki is ‘‘a nice change’’.

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2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281573768883822

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