The Pandemic’s Hidden Victims: Sick or Dying, but Not From the Virus

This is part of the reason for preventing a huge number of Covid-19 cases at the same time, flattening the curve as they say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/health/treatment-delays-coronavirus.html

By Denise Grady
April 20, 2020


Maria Kefalas considers her husband, Patrick Carr, a forgotten victim of the coronavirus.

In January, Mr. Carr, a sociology professor at Rutgers University, suffered a relapse of the blood cancer that he has had for eight years. Once again, he required chemotherapy to try to bring the disease, multiple myeloma, under control.

But this time, as the coronavirus began raging through Philadelphia, blood supplies were rationed and he couldn’t get enough of the transfusions needed to alleviate his anemia and allow chemo to begin. Clinic visits were canceled even as his condition worsened.

For Mr. Carr and many others, the pandemic has shaken every aspect of health care, including cancer, organ transplants and even brain surgery.

On April 7, Mr. Carr began receiving home hospice care. He died on April 16. He was 53. The pandemic “expedited his death,” Ms. Kefalas said.

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Beds, blood, doctors, nurses and ventilators are in short supply; operating rooms are being turned into intensive care units; and surgeons have been redeployed to treat people who cannot breathe. Even if there is room for other patients, medical centers hesitate to bring them in unless it is absolutely necessary, for fear of infecting them — or of health workers being infected by them. Patients themselves are afraid to set foot in the hospital even if they are really sick.

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Nearly one in four cancer patients reported delays in their care because of the pandemic, including access to in-person appointments, imaging, surgery and other services, according to a recent survey by the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network.

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“My department has 65 surgeries on the schedule,” said Dr. David Langer, the director of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Neither he nor other neurosurgeons have operated in weeks; they have been redeployed to the I.C.U. to take care of coronavirus patients.

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Some of his other patients with serious illnesses have also refused to go to the hospital, for the same reason[fear that they could get Covid-19 there]. One who wanted to go, and whose family called 911, was urged by paramedics to stay home because the hospital was overwhelmed by coronavirus cases. He did stay home, and died a few days later.

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