Miller v Corona
I want to cover a few questions and issues we have been grappling with over the past few days if your reading on you can jump ahead to the relevant section.
- How common is it?
- How severe is it?
- How are we managing it?
1. Our little clinic in Ottawa has seen a jump in cases of Coronavirus in the last 2 weeks, it seems we are lagging behind the rest of Canada, as we move towards an easing of restrictions, I expect to see the virus run rampant. Not that the stats are matching my observation, which is only that a single point observation is never accurate, but it worries me.
2. In the early weeks of the pandemic I thought this was going to be little more than flu, but I think I was mistaken. In Ottawa the recent outbreak resulted in the death of a pregnant woman, which I have never seen from the flu, maybe its that we don’t test all ‘flu’ patients with viral PCR but I am sure I would have remembered it. Some of the coronavirus cases have developed complications after the infection – I have in the last week seen my first case of GB syndrome in the community – this is rare enough, the last case I saw was in 1997 and that case was seen in hospital where there is a concentration of pathology, this was in the community. There is also an increase in Kawasaki’s disease a rare post viral complication of coronavirus. In short this is nothing like the common cold in severity and it kicks the flu in the cojones, and I do not want it for anyone of any age.
3. As a result of our experience with this pandemic, our clinic is seeing one patient at a time, the waiting room is really the car-park outside. My family physician colleagues in Australia and South Africa are running their clinics outdoors in the garden.
