The director of critical care for the Houston Methodist Hospital system said the community should express gratitude to its doctors and nurses – and their families – who face daily risks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A group of Garden Oaks residents recently did just that, showing their appreciation for a Houston Methodist nurse who lives in their neighborhood.
Before dawn on the morning of April 10, more than 20 Garden Oaks residents gathered in front of the home of Sherry Chavez as she was leaving for her shift at an emergency care center in Southwest Houston. They surprised Chavez and her children by cheering for her, displaying pompoms and personalized posters, giving her food she could take to work and, above all, saying thank you.
“It was so heartwarming,” Chavez said. “It made me feel so good about what I do. I love my job.”
Dr. Faisal Masud, who oversees the eight intensive care units in the Houston Methodist system, said treating COVID-19 patients has been “very exhausting” for the hospitals’ staffs. They are combating an upper-respiratory disease that is new to the human species, encountering gravely ill patients who must be separated from their families and coping with the ever-present possibility of contracting the new strain of coronavirus, all while wearing cumbersome personal protective equipment.
Masud called COVID-19 the “disease of our lifetime” because it spreads easily and rapidly and causes some patients to “get very sick, very quickly.”
“That is the scary part,” he said. “This is way worse than what we have faced before.”
However, Masud added, “That doesn’t mean we are not dealing with it.”
Masud said Houston Methodist has been treating about 200 COVID-19 patients per day at its hospitals, with that number remaining fairly steady during the last two weeks. As of Tuesday, he also said coronavirus patients occupied about 120 of the hospital system’s 320 ICU beds.
A spokesperson for Memorial Hermann Health System, which has two facilities in the Heights area, said it had a total of 174 COVID-19 patients on April 6. Eight days later, that number was 173.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Tuesday that hospitals throughout the Houston region remained within their capacities in terms of beds, ICU beds and ventilators, even as the number of COVID-19 cases in the area has steadily climbed. As of Tuesday, there had been a total of 3,907 cases identified among city and Harris County residents, with 52 people having died from the disease and 714 having recovered.
“We have planned and prepared for dealing with a pandemic as we do with natural disasters,” said Paul O’Sullivan, senior vice president and CEO for Memorial Hermann Greater Heights Hospital at 1635 N. Loop W. “Memorial Hermann is confident in our ability to care for the community during this time.”
Masud said it has helped that hospitals have suspended elective surgeries, which has enabled them to devote more resources to treating COVID-19 patients. He also credited the social distancing guidelines in place – all of Harris County has been under a stay-at-home, work safe order since March 24 – and said healthcare professionals in Houston have learned from the more accelerated and severe outbreaks in places such as New York, Italy and Wuhan, China, where the disease originated in December.
Since late March, Houston Methodist has been using convalescent serum therapy to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients. It involves transfusing blood plasma from a person who has recovered from the disease, and built up antibodies against it, into a person who is infected.
“It’s too early to make a final statement,” Masud said, “but the early indications are very promising.”
Masud said Houston Methodist also has gotten innovative in the way its doctors and nurses interact with COVID-19 patients in the ICU. Equipment is being placed just outside patients’ rooms to minimize exposure to nurses, who also are utilizing what Masud called a “virtual ICU.” He said high-powered cameras allow nurses to examine patients without being in the same room.
Masud said Houston Methodist also has created a layer of protection between infected patients and healthcare workers by using plexiglass partitions that resemble telephone booths. He said N95 masks are not needed when using those partitions, which allows the hospital to conserve those scarce, otherwise essential pieces of protective equipment.
O’Sullivan said Memorial Hermann recently partnered with TX/RX Labs, a local nonprofit manufacturing company, to bolster its supply of face shields and other protective equipment.
While the hospitals are handling the local COVID-19 outbreak for now, Masud said the next week or two will be “very critical” and urged Houstonians to continue wearing masks in public and practice social distancing. He said about 20 percent of those infected are asymptomatic carriers, between 30-40 percent of patients are under the age of 50, and people with underlying health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are most vulnerable to serious complications.
“This is not a vacation,” Masud said of the stay-at-home order. “Please help us help you.”