When the coronavirus pandemic began, the messaging from the medical community was clear: if you’re having symptoms, call your doctor. Call. Don’t go to the emergency room. And get guidance before going into the doctor’s office. This was new and fluid and highly contagious. And it is still those things, but there are safety protocols in place at hospitals to make it as safe as possible for anyone needing emergency services.
Some haven’t gotten that note. Earlier in the week, I dialed Dr. Mark Casanova, the head of the Dallas County Medical Society, for comment about the governor’s plan to reopen the economy. After we finished chatting, I asked if there was anything else he’d like to discuss. He told me that people were having stroke symptoms and not calling 911. Our Will Maddox wrote about this earlier in the week: ERs were getting more patients dead on arrival (like, 54 percent more) in 2020 than 2019. Overall ambulance transport was down 30 percent.
This is happening elsewhere, too. Boston’s emergency physicians reported drops of about 40 percent in ER visits. Texas Health Resources issued an alert about this issue, urging patients to not hesitate to call in an emergency. Here’s what Casanova wanted to leave you with:
“Our message four weeks ago of ‘don’t just walk into your doctor’s office or an ER’ was related to, if you think you might have COVID or if you’re just curious that you have COVID, don’t do that. We want the reminder to be, listen, if you’re having some serious medical conditions and you’re sitting there at home nervous or scared, if you’re mild-to-modest scared call your doctor. If you’re starting to have neurologic symptoms, call 911 immediately. Hospitals have their policies, they have their procedures down, they have patients where they need to be who are positive, away from others who don’t.
We’re in a much different position now. We can’t emphasize that there are more things that happen to us as people than COVID-19. If you’re having a serious medical concern, we can’t emphasize enough to call 911.”
