“She was there from day one pushing a boulder up the hill when infrastructure was lacking,” said Lisa Chacko, the city of Gainesville’s COVID adviser. Other local medical officials credit Merck as one of the many examples of local researchers who assisted with the county’s virus response. She wishes she could see the bigger picture and lasting impact, or the “10,000-foot view” as she likes to call it, that shows how the virus could last in the community. “In some ways, as emergency medicine docs, we’ve been preparing for this throughout all of our training.” “I think that those of us practicing medicine today, the majority of us have never experienced anything like this,” she said. 1 in an emergency medicine career, Merck said, is to prepare for anything. The results suggest, Merck said, that the protective measures first responders use, such as personal protective equipment, are highly effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19.īut rule No. 6% at the beginning of June, lower than the rate of Alachua County at large. Her tracking of the test results from first responders show that the measured prevalence rate of COVID-19 in the asymptomatic individuals and frontline providers in North Central Florida was. As of June 6, 1,336 people have been swabbed or had blood drawn. Prior to Mother’s Day, she recalled a surge of first responders showing up to be tested. “I think it was this respect for community and community wellness that was driving the testing.” “A lot of people expressed the desire to understand that they were keeping their family safe,” she recalled. In the first week the three testing sites opened in April, over 300 people showed up.
#UF HEALTH TOWER HILL FREE#
The free testing allowed first responders of any kind, hailing as far as Jacksonville, to undergo a swab test and learn the results within 24-48 hours. Within days of the first reported case of positive case, Merck and UF College of Medicine Dean Adrian Tyndall developed a testing system for asymptomatic firefighters, nurses, physicians, police officers and EMS responders/workers for 65 law enforcement agencies across North Central Florida. She soon joined one of the hospital’s many teams that addressed its COVID response daily and eventually became one of the many UF Health members whose colleagues say did plenty of heavy lifting during the outbreak’s early days.
#UF HEALTH TOWER HILL FULL#
She recalled the room being full of “problem-solvers” from all divisions of the hospital, ranging from administration to pediatrics to the supply division. “I wanted to go down there and see what people were doing and how I could help plan and organize and understand how people from facilities all the way through the ICUs were coordinating responses.“
“I really didn’t feel comfortable being anywhere else,” she said.
#UF HEALTH TOWER HILL HOW TO#
With less than one year under her belt at UF Health Shands Hospital, the epidemiologist and emergency medicine specialist who just moved from Rhode Island wound through the basement hallways at the North Tower of the medical campus in March, entering a room where employees of all kinds huddled to discuss how to tackle the biggest challenge of their careers. When the COVID-19 crisis began to look as though it would take hold in a serious way in Alachua County, UF Health newcomer Lisa Merck sought to help any way she could.
0 kommentar(er)
