Doctor who treated first US coronavirus case talks outbreak in Washington state
Providence Regional Medical Center's Dr. George Diaz offers insight.
Dr. George Diaz, the section chief for infectious diseases at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash., told "America's News HQ" on Sunday that most patients infected with the coronavirus can recover at home and do not need to be hospitalized.
"Most folks that are infected with this virus will have a mild disease — won't need to come to the hospital, won't have to be admitted," Diaz said.
"Those people at low risk, there's really not much at this point that needs to be done for them in terms of staying home while they're ill," he added.
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Diaz oversaw the treatment of the first U.S. patient diagnosed with the coronavirus after returning from a trip to China. The patient has since been released from the hospital and spent the rest of his recovery in isolation at home.
With 18 reported deaths in Washington state, Diaz and his team have been working on making the proper "distinction" between those infected who were at low risk and could recover at home, and those who were at high risk -- such as infected patients with underlying medical issues or patients over the age of 60, he explained.
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"There is a distinction that we're making in terms of risk assessment for those who are at high risk for severe disease," Diaz said. "We're working on triaging those groups of folks so that we're keeping a close eye on these people who present for testing to make sure that we keep track of them."
He continued, "We're plugging them into our telehealth program so we can monitor oxygen levels at home and their vital signs to make sure that they don't have a decline and this includes folks over the age of 60 or [who] have other medical problems that put them at high risk."
Diaz said medical professionals have not been able to identify why older people or those with compromised immune systems have been at a higher risk than they would be if they were fighting a seasonal case of the flu.
"We do know when they become infected, many of them end up in the hospital in ICUs, and the mortality seems to be quite high in that patient population. That's what we're seeing at least locally, probably worse than what we usually see in the seasonal flu in the population. Why that is, I don't think we understand quite yet," he explained.
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Diaz also echoed the statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advising the public against wearing surgical masks throughout everyday life, saying, "The CDC has been very clear that the average person walking the streets is very low-risk in general and is not advised to buy [and wear] masks out and about."
Fox News' Leland Vittert contributed to this report.
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