Helping people in need of medical care during isolation

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April 28, 2020 — Good morning from Toronto. It's Allan Ryan here with your Tuesday CurveFlattener. The reality of the social isolation experienced in response to Covid-19 is that it has different effects on different types of people. Some are enjoying more time with family, others are taking the enforced break as a way to re-charge, to read, to think. On the other hand, a poll released yesterday indicates that half of Canadians report a worsening of their mental health since the lockdown began.

And then there are others in isolation who have health requirements that must be addressed quickly and on a regular schedule.

Take the issue of people with chronic wounds. According to Wounds Canada, 30% to 50% of all healthcare in Canada involves a wound, and many people are unable to access the wound care they need at this time. This led to the development of the Telewound Coalition, a North American network of wound experts who provide remote wound care management in Canada and the U.S. A short primer on wound care is available (see photo). More details here.

And then there are organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), which have based their entire programs on weekly, sometimes daily, support meetings and personal interactions with others in the group. In Ontario’s Niagara region, for example, a recent report in the St. Catharines (Ont.) Standard newspaper said that prior to Covid-19, AA was holding about 90 meetings weekly for nearly 2,000 AA members, and up to 200 NA members. Both organizations have moved to online support groups, but acknowledge that is considered only a second-best approach. Said one NA leader quoted in the article: “[NA and AA] is something that has been saving their lives for years, and this thing [Covid-19] comes along and threatens it."

COVID CHRONICLE 04/27/2020

• The University of Toronto’s Continuing Professional Development office in the Department of Medicine has created a hub of curated clinical resources called the Covid-19 Resource Library. They also offer frequent webinars on Covid-19 topics such as ‘Direct to patient virtual mental health care.’ The medical journal The Lancet has some interesting infographics on the pandemic here.
• An Australian study reported by the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper says children are unlikely to transmit Covid-19 between each other or to adults. Although 735 students and 128 staff were considered close contacts of 18 initial cases, the study from Australia's New South Wales Health Centre for Immunization Research and Surveillance reported that no teacher or staff member were infected by any of the original cases from March to mid-April.
• A segment on Sunday (04/26/20) night’s "60 Minutes" TV news show profiled a Toronto company that has developed a global early warning system for infectious disease. In late December, 2019, BlueDot raised the alarm among its clients regarding the emerging risk from Covid-19 in China’s Hubei province. .

STORIES CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

Assistant Editor Dhiren Mahiban has filed a report on Canadian reaction to new guidelines released regarding the treatment of psoriasis in pediatric patients, coming in the next issue of The Chronicle of Skin & Allergy.


RIGHT NOW WE ARE LISTENING TO...

The Best of The Statler Brothers. Founding member and bass singer Harold Reid, 80, died on the weekend. A long-time vocal back-up group for Johnny Cash, the harmony quartet struck out on their own in the mid ‘60s and produced some hit songs, such as "Flowers on the Wall" (1965) and "Elizabeth" (1983). They also picked up some Grammy awards along the way.


RIGHT NOW WE ARE READING...

Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs. Dr. Michael Osterholm’s 2017 book pretty much outlines the inevitability of how the world arrived at today’s Covid-19 situation. Dr. Osterholm, an epidemiologist and founding director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, describes how ill-prepared global healthcare was for outbreaks of Ebola, MERS and now Covid-19. A word of advice: Don’t read it all in one sitting.

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TONIGHT WE ARE EATING...

Two pizza slices left over from the weekend, with an ice cream chaser (pistachio).


HOW DOES YOUR WEEK LOOK?

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That's it. Stay in touch, stay safe. Mitch Shannon will provide tomorrow's report.