dfd (Photo courtesy TK)
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Our Stories
am an emergency medicine physician and physician chief operations executive at Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista. I have cared for COVID-19 patients in our emergency department while also overseeing clinical operations throughout the hospital. This pandemic was truly a novel situation for us: a new, highly transmissible virus was affecting people’s lungs and was sometimes fatal. Hospital staff members didn’t know if we would get infected as we provided care. We feared not only for our patients, but also for each other, our children and our families. All of that played into the anticipation of that first infected pa - tient coming in which happend in March, 2020. Being on the front lines of COVID-19 required personal courage because we didn’t know that much about the disease in its early stages. We were hearing that health care workers were becoming ill and some of them were dying. But our commitment to take care of our community never wavered.
Hope By Juan Manuel Tovar, M.D. Emergency Medicine Physician and Physician Chief Operations Executive Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista, California
Below: Medical Team treating a COVID-19 patient. Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista – June 16, 2020 (Photo courtesy Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista)
Patient face down. (Photo courtesy Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista)
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San Diego Latino Legacy – Timeline • Milestones • Stories
Chapter 8 – Facing COVID-19
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