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September 2021 Covid Update
Owen Linder, MD, FACP
Internal Medicine
960 Main St # 1, Safety Harbor, FL 34695 (map)
To my dear patients,
The treatment of Covid has evolved in our area.
Aside from my immediate prescribing of Tamiflu for early Covid symptoms ; or hospitalization for severe symptoms; there is a third treatment path for middling illness, now in practical use in the country.
Recently three of you have been given monoclonal antibody infusion. The antibody infusion is given as an outpatient in less than a day. The closest site is Federal: Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church at 409 South Old Coachman Road in Clearwater. Infusion centers administer the infusion. The Federal government provides this free to patients.
To be considered the Covid test must be positive. We have a list of testing sites.
This is a pandemic. 6600 cases have been fatal in August in Florida. The Baycare hospital system is full of Covid cases. Baycare has to defer elective overnight surgeries until the beds, respirators and the staff are not filled up with Covid Delta variant cases. Baycare is reserving its emergency rooms from testing for Covid. Instead it offers thirteen walkin clinics for testing.
It is very reasonable to go to a Baycare walk in clinic if you feel ill with covid symptoms, like trouble breathing. They can do testing rapidly with reliable test kits.
A recently reported study of 75,000 cases in California in 2020 showed reinfection documented in 0.8% of prior Covid sufferers. The authors do recommend vaccination to these breakthrough patients.
We must protect friends, society, & children who are still too young to be vaccinated: please get vaccinated if you haven’t. Kudos to all of you who have gotten vaccinated. If you get Covid anyway it is going to be a much milder case.
There is no room for bad choices in this public health pandemic. It is the social, moral imperative now to limit the spread of this plague. Covid is on track to have been fatal to 750,000 Americans in a few months.
The ICU beds and ventilators at Baycare system hospitals are full of Covid patients. 87% of the cases were not vaccinated. Wear masks around anybody out of your home. Persons can transmit the Delta variant readily if they are unmasked carriers.
Delta is more readily transmitted and more virulent than the strain which started in 2020. We need to pull together. Protect yourselves. We look forward to seeing you in the office as you need. Lets turn this around with vaccinations. If you have any questions or concerns about the vaccine, we care about getting you answers
Owen Linder, MD, FACP
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