NYC critical care physician: Waves of coronavirus cases have bent the system
We're losing a lot of our patients, says Dr. Steve Kassapidis, a critical care physician in New York City.
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Dr. Sotirios Kassapidis, a New York City critical care physician, joined "Tucker Carlson Tonight" and painted a bleak picture of the battle against the coronavirus outbreak in the city's hosptials.
"The system has bent, but we're surviving. The patients keep coming in in waves ... I compare it to the big, the blitzkrieg," Kassapidis said. "You get that little calm and then the other wave comes in. We have a lot of people on ventilators."
"The majority of the hospital [I work at] was COVID-positive.Very few people who do not have the virus," Kassapidis added. "And unfortunately, those people are sick, too. And you don't want anybody falling through the cracks."
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Carlson asked Kassapidis about ventilators and their importance in the battle against the coronavirus.
"The difficulty with the virus is we have multiple ways of oxygenating people. Regular oxygen, 100 percent face masks by BIPAP or C-PAP, high-flow oxygen and the last resort is a ventilator," Kassapidis said. "What we've noticed is that the majority of the patients will get a little bit better and then they'll decompensate. And when they decompensate, they decompensate rapidly. And it's at that point that they go on the ventilators. A lot of the patients, even though they're on the ventilators, will decompensate further."
Kassapidis said that a "majority" of those who get moved to ventilators and continue to decompensate "don't survive."
"We've had a couple of successes where we've been able to exorbate patients and they've improved, but for the majority of the part we're losing a lot of our patients," Kassapidis said.
Carlson asked about the demographics of those who die from the disease.
"We've had patients from 30 to 80. No underlying conditions," Kassapidis said bluntly. "If they have underlying conditions, that's a strike against them."
"So we get patients from every walk of life, every age," Kassapidis added. "The higher their co-morbidities are, the higher their risk of mortality."
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The doctor told Carlson he's more concerned for the health of his daughter and wife, both New York City doctors and that he's been "lucky" so far.
"So far I've been lucky," Kassapidis said. "Theoretically, if there's anybody who should have been positive by now, it should've been me."
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