One of the first Americans to get COVID-19 suffered serious complications, adding damaged lungs and blood flow that led to the amputation of the maximum of his fingers.
Gregg Garfield, 54, caught fire with the virus while skiing in Italy in February, as did a dozen of his friends who accompanied him on the journey, KTLA reported.
Once Garfield returned to Southern California, his symptoms worsened and he entered Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Los Angeles County, placing the first COVID-19 patient in the hospital where he would spend the next 64 days fighting the virus.
After being hospitalized, Garfield’s condition deteriorated and in two days, medical staff placed him on a ventilator.
During his hospital, adding 31 days on a ventilator, doctors diagnosed Garfield with several life-threatening complications, adding MRSA superbacteria infection, sepsis, kidney failure, liver failure, pulmonary embolisms (blocked blood vessels in the lungs) and 4 trapped lung sites.
Broken lungs occur when air escapes from a broken lung in the area between the organ and chest wall.
The mortality rate for COVID-19 patients who were placed in a ventilator is at least 70 percent, Dr. Daniel Dea of Providence St. Joseph told KTLA. But due to his complications, the medicine gave Garfield only a 1% chance of surviving at some point in his illness.
“Medically, I’ll be here, ” said Garfield to KTLA.
Surprisingly, Garfield recovered to the fullest and was discharged from the hospital in early May, which Dea described as “amazing.” However, surgeons were forced to amputate all hands of Garfield’s right hand and maximum numbers in his left hand.
“I’m here just to stand. I turned around with a 100 percent capacity on everything from my kidneys, my liver, my cognitive,” he said. “I survived that. I’m fantastic. However, be careful with that. My hands will never be the same again. I don’t have any more hands. It can happen to you.”
Garfield’s surgeon, Dr. David Kulber of Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said the virus can flow simply into inflamed people, which is why his patient’s hands had to be amputated. Garfield will undergo other operations to place prosthetics in his hand.
With the accumulation of coronavirus cases across the country, President Donald Trump minimizes the severity of the disease and many Americans decide not to wear a mask, Garfield and his friend A.J. Johnson said his case deserves to serve as a warning for others to take COVID-19 seriously.
“It shouldn’t be political,” Johnson told KTLA. “We’ll have to come in combination as human beings.”
Coronavirus infections are in California, and the state is now one of the main COVID-19 hot spots in the United States.
California, the most populous state in the U.S., has the highest number of cases shown in the country: more than 453,600 as of July 25, according to the State Department of Public Health. And the state has recorded more than 8,100 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic, the fourth-highest number in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.
The average positivity rate of 14 days, a key indicator of network extension, is increasing, the branch said.
“While the ability to test continues to increase state, an increase in the number of positive cases is expected, expanding the importance of positivity rates to locate symptoms of network spread,” the branch said in a statement.
The last average number of new instances over seven days in the state is 9,852 consistent with the day, consistent with the number of the week after 9,127. Hospitalizations have also increased in the last two weeks, according to state data.
Los Angeles County was the domain most affected in California by the pandemic, with more than 173,900 cases and 4,300 deaths.
On Sunday, the county reported 1,703 new cases and 10 more deaths, officials said the figures were incomplete due to delays in the state labs’ reporting system, the City News Service reported. As a result, the number of instances is expected to increase in the coming days.
The number of other people hospitalized in the county with a proven COVID-19 is just over 2,000, 31 percent of whom are in intensive care, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
In fact, the number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations in the county is almost record, which led to the U.S. Air Force. To deploy medical services to two hospitals in the Los Angeles area and six more in the state.
“We look across the state,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of fitness and human services, told City News Service. “Los Angeles County, with giant hospitals, primary centers with the greatest transmission of disease, fears of ensuring that hospitals at this vital center receive support, has housed two of the eight teams. We will continue to work with our federal partners to make sure you can move to strategic locations across the state if needed.”
The purpose is to make sure that “patients get the point of care they want and that staffing doesn’t become the challenge of providing high-quality care to the state,” he said.
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