Coronavirus Latest: Philadelphia ER Physician Not Surprised She Contracted COVID-19, 'Just A Reality' She Expected
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Doctors and health care workers are among the growing number of people infected with COVID-19. CBS3 talked to a Philadelphia emergency department physician who has tested positive.
Doctors, nurses and health care workers all over the Philadelphia region have tested positive for COVID-19. One of the first was a cardiologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's King of Prussia site.
The emergency doctor who spoke to CBS3 wants to keep her identity private while letting people know the virus is manageable for patients and doctors.
"I'm feeling OK. I'm pretty wiped out, confined to my bedroom and feel pretty weak," she said. "It is something that you can recover from. The vast majority of people will do well."
The emergency department physician wants to remain anonymous to protect the Philadelphia-area hospital where she works.
She says the symptoms -- a fever, body aches and fatigue -- took a while to develop.
"It's an extreme reality that many, many people are going to get it. You shouldn't except yourself and believe that you're immune," she said.
The ER physician believes she was exposed to COVID-19 while traveling, not in the hospital. She has not been around patients.
"I wasn't at all surprised. I guess I sort of believed that I would be one of the people that would test positive given my line of work, so it was sort of just a reality I expected," she said.
She says in the face of what looks like chaos, the medical community on the front lines is trained for this kind of outbreak.
"We're not panicking on the inside. We just want all pieces of this to come together so we can all live together and combat it," she said. "In emergency medicine, you kind of expect that something like this will happen. You focus and you hunker down and you turn on all of those automatic responses you're trained to do, but in other ways, it feels very surreal."
It's not the kind of reality that anyone expected.
Like doctors everywhere, she's concerned about medical supplies. She says stopping the spread is imperative.
"Right now, we need the public to join with us. It's not just a medical establishment response. We need everyone to do their part to try and eliminate overwhelming the hospital resources," she said.
Doctors everywhere are imploring people to stay home. It's the only way to combat the outbreak before it really gets out of control.
