Transcript
My name is Axel Grothey. I'm a medical oncologist at West Cancer Center in Memphis, Germantown, Tennessee. I'm the director of GI cancer research here at the center. Of course, we're all affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, which has not spared any part of the country, and now it really presents a huge challenge how to manage oncology patients at the time of this crisis.
What kind of challenges do we have in our routine clinical practice? Everyone's scared. Everyone's scared of coronavirus patients. Patients are scared to come into facilities. Patients are scared to get treatment. Nurses are worried in this environment. Everyone who has a family at home, of course, wants to protect their family.
I see that we are not fully equipped with all the protective gear that we'd like to have. I know this is a shortage that is being recorded nationwide, and I would love this to be addressed. It's not just ventilators, it's also PPEs, it's masks, it's face shields, etc.
Those are things we are lacking. We're lacking tests. It's better now, we can test patients for a coronavirus infection, but turnaround time is still not optimal. In the end, what I'd like to see is also eventually tests of immunity against the virus, which we don't know exactly how long it will last.
I'd like to see a test of a specific IgG and IgM to see who has gone through an infection recently and who already has at least some immunity. Now, these tests are being developed. There are actually some tests in the market already which can be ordered, but I'm worried that these tests might not be specific enough for this type of coronavirus that we have.
Positive IgG tests might not really fully indicate whether the person who carries the IgG is really immune at least for now against this very specific virus. There are a lot of challenges that we're facing. We're all monitoring these different projections, curves on various websites.
Here in Tennessee, we expect that our peak demand of healthcare utilization will come in about 2 weeks. In other areas of the country, it might be earlier, like New York, or later. It's uncharted waters. We are not clear, not fully aware of what to expect.
I hope that we can avoid some of the more dramatic experiences that our colleagues in New York, and specifically Northern Italy and Spain, are really experiencing right now. I hope we can avoid that.
So the bottom-line is way we can avoid this is by social distancing, by washing our hands, disinfecting our hands, and keeping apart from each other as much as possible, and just trying to stay mentally and emotionally healthy by utilizing modern communication techniques if we are alone, like I am right now here in Germantown, Tennessee.
