Fight

Remote and Ready to Fight Coronavirus’s Next Wave

By Kristie J. Fields 2 weeks ago

In mid-March, Dr. Jim Bristow’s wife came down with gastrointestinal issues. Then, she couldn’t stop coughing.

Her symptoms pointed to coronavirus, but she couldn’t get tested — in part because of the nationwide test shortage, but also because the pair lived in Vashon, an idyllic town on an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound with scant medical resources. When Dr. Anthony S. Fauci of President Trump’s coronavirus task force said that the United States was failing with regards to testing, Dr. Bristow, said that it “really struck me.”

Dr. Bristow felt inspired to collaborate with other members in the Vashon community to develop a model to test, trace and isolate — in essence, a coronavirus response plan that they call the Rural Test & Trace Toolkit. Dr. Bristow, a retired cardiologist who was trained at the start of the AIDS epidemic, now believes that their model can be replicated,

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In the Fight to Treat Coronavirus, Your Lungs Are a Battlefield

By Kristie J. Fields 4 weeks ago

Ventilators have become the single most important piece of medical equipment for critically ill coronavirus patients whose damaged lungs prevent them from getting enough oxygen to vital organs. The machines work by forcing air deep into the lungs, dislodging the fluid and accumulated pus that interfere with the exchange of oxygen, a process orchestrated by tiny air sacs known as alveoli.

It’s still not clear how lungs are affected by Covid-19.

Lungs are complex organs that deliver oxygen to the bloodstream and keep organs functioning.


Human lungs are spongy vessels made up of millions of microscopic, balloon-shaped air sacs called alveoli, the workhorse of the respiratory system where the exchange of gases takes place.






A single alveolus, no bigger than the width of a human hair, is ringed by a mesh of tiny capillaries that transport oxygen to the bloodstream.

A single alveolus, no bigger than the width of a

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To Fight Virus in Prisons, C.D.C. Suggests More Screenings

By Kristie J. Fields 4 weeks ago

Jails and prisons are among the most challenging places to control the outbreak of the coronavirus. Similar to cruise ships and nursing homes, detention facilities have crowded living spaces and shared dining areas, as well as communal bathrooms and a lack of space to isolate infected detainees, all of which makes physical distancing practices difficult to achieve.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study of the spread of the coronavirus in prisons and detention centers in the United States, both public and private. Although it did not have complete figures for the approximately 2.1 million people incarcerated nationally, the study found that nearly 5,000 prisoners had contracted the virus along with over 2,000 staff members, resulting in 103 deaths in total.

“This analysis provides the first documentation of the number of reported laboratory-confirmed cases of Covid-19 in correctional and detention facilities in the United States,”

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32 Days on a Ventilator: One Covid Patient’s Fight to Breathe Again

By Kristie J. Fields 1 month ago

HINGHAM, Mass. — “Is he going to make it?” Kim Bello asked, clutching her phone, alone in her yard.

She had slipped outside so her three children, playing games in the living room, could be shielded from a wrenching conversation with a doctor treating her husband, Jim. For two weeks, he had been battling the coronavirus at Massachusetts General Hospital, on a ventilator and, for the past nine days, connected to a last-resort artificial heart-lung machine as well.

The physician, Dr. Emmy Rubin, gently told Ms. Bello that while her husband had a chance of surviving, “If you’re asking for an honest opinion, it’s more likely than not that he won’t.”

Mr. Bello, 49, an athletic and healthy lawyer, had developed a 103 degree fever in early March after a hike in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and landed in a suburban emergency room six days later, struggling to

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