CORAL GABLES, FLA. (WSVN) - Dr. Dave Woolsey is on the front lines of Miami’s coronavirus pandemic.
He’s an emergency room doctor at Jackson Health, where there are more than 150 COVID-19 patients.
Woolsey said, “You add in the stress of knowing this is something you could get sick and die from and it ups the anti and it increases the tension a little bit.”
Dr. Woolsey has worked in the Jackson ER for 30 years.
When asked if he’s faced anything like this before, Woolsey said, “This is completely different. I was here at almost the very beginning of HIV and through everything our community’s been through. This is something that effects everybody.”
He said guidance on how to treat COVID patients can change day to day, like new evidence that ventilators are not always the best treatment. He said he is seeing proof of that.
“When this data first started coming out of China, the recommendation was that people with low oxygen, you should intubate them quickly because they can deteriorate quickly, and they can, but they also can go a long time that you would not expect and get better without intubating them,” he said.
Some have said people without pre-existing medical conditions can’t get extremely sick or die from COVID-19.
Based on what he has seen at Jackson, Dr. Woolsey said that is just not true.
“That is crazy talk,” he said. “I have treated critical young people. I have treated critical middle aged people– people with no past medical conditions. No one can tell you yet why some of those people get really sick and some of them don’t.”
Personally, the pandemic has been difficult for doctors and their families.
Dr. Woolsey has been sleeping in his guest cottage for almost a month, unable to hug his wife or daughter, worried he could get them sick.
Woolsey said, “I didn’t anticipate this. This is the hardest part of the whole thing, is not being able to hug your family.”
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