Masks will help blunt COVID spike

I am a health care provider, and I would like to share some of my experiences over the past few months with the hope that I can increase awareness of the importance of wearing masks.

I am a nephrologist, a physician who specializes in the care of patients with kidney disease. I care for people who have had kidney transplants and people who are receiving dialysis treatments for kidney failure, people who have the highest risk of severe disease from COVID-19. I have seen my patients contract the virus and become critically ill with low oxygen levels, some requiring ventilator support and some dying from the infection.

I have been practicing medicine for 16 years, nine years in this community, and I have never seen a health crisis like COVID-19. This virus is unpredictable. I have seen people test positive for SARS-COV2 and never develop symptoms, and I have seen people die within days of feeling ill.

Additionally, COVID complicates other, seemingly unrelated health concerns. My colleagues and I have seen patients newly diagnosed with cancer who have to delay their chemotherapy because they test positive for or are exposed to someone with COVID, patients with pain whose surgeries are delayed because they test positive for SARS-COV2 or their surgeon contracts the virus, and critically ill patients who have to be diverted to another hospital because our hospital has no available beds.

When a large fraction of the community shut down in April due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health care did not. We continued to go to work every day, and we were proud to do so. I will admit though, it was frightening to leave the house and go to work in March and April. We did not have a good understanding of how this virus was spread and we did not have enough available tests to know how prevalent it was in our community. We came home and changed our clothes, washing them in hot water and showering before hugging our children.

Every morning we all would wake and do an internal scan: Do I have a sore throat? Cough? Shortness of breath? Headache? Can I smell my coffee? Am I safe to go to work today? Will I bring this home to my family, my parents, my children?

During that time there was confusion regarding masking recommendations from the CDC and the WHO. At first, we did not believe that masks would be protective, and this was complicated by a period of time when there was a shortage of available masks for health care providers. The past seven months of worldwide experience have taught us that without a doubt, masks are effective in reducing the risk of transmission of this virus.

Locally, we saw a steep increase in the number of cases in our community in June and July as people traveled here for the summer. When Panhandle Health passed the controversial mask mandate, there was an observable and traceable steep decrease in the number of cases in our community. It was remarkable to see, and as a community physician I say thank you to Panhandle Health for taking a stand and making a difficult decision.

As health care providers, we now know that if we and our asymptomatic patients are wearing masks and washing our hands, our chances of acquiring this virus and of transmitting the virus are not zero, but are significantly reduced. With a mask, we can feel more comfortable going to work because we know we are doing something effective to prevent contracting the virus ourselves and passing it to our patients and families.

We are currently seeing another increase in cases in our community similar to what we saw in July. This correlates with cooler weather, more time spent indoors, schools reopening and probably some component of COVID-19 fatigue and a desire to get back to normal life. I am as eager as anyone for life to get back to the way it was, but acting like life is normal now will further delay our return to normal life.

I would like to extend a request to the people who can wear masks that you wear one indoors and when you are in close proximity to people who are not your family. It will decrease rates of transmission and infection, decreasing our numbers of hospitalized patients and allowing us to care for our patients with all types of medical problems.

Emily Petersen, MD, FASN, is a local physician.