While communities in the United States continue to scale the epidemiological curve of the coronavirus pandemic, doctors in South Carolina say residents here must prepare for a wave of disease that sweeps through Palmetto in the next two to three weeks.
“I think the tsunami is on its way. I hope our tsunami is not as big as New York, New Orleans, Detroit, Seattle and Italy,“said Dr. Antine Stenbit, pulmonologist and intensive care physician at Prisma Upstate.” This is not just H1N1. This is not just the flu. This and much more. … This is something that happens once in a lifetime. ”
The curve of any disease can take a variety of forms. US health officials have often been quoted as saying that this country needs to take steps to “flatten the curve” so that the COVID-19 infection rate does not rise so abruptly and so quickly that the disease overwhelms the patient’s capacity. health system. once.
Different regions of the country are scaling this curve at different rates. New York, for example, has seen a large increase in cases, while some hospitals in South Carolina have not yet treated a single coronavirus-positive patient. Meanwhile, other countries, like China, where the virus first emerged last year, are on the decline in their disease curve, as the number of new cases decreases.
“We should all expect you to get here as you arrived in New York,” said Dr. Heather Hughes, an infectious physician at Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, in downtown Charleston. “There is nothing to suggest that the virus should behave differently in our state compared to others. … Although I wish it would end tomorrow, I think we have some difficult weeks ahead of us.”
Dr. Anne Vandersteenhoven, who works as director of the Primsa Midlands laboratory system, also predicted that South Carolina is on the verge of a significant increase in cases.
“We expect the storm to be short-lived,” she said.
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