Dr. Sharon Price wears a face mask. Community members have made and donated cloth masks to Tift Regional Medical Center.

TIFTON — The past couple of months are unlike anything Dr. Kaine Brown has ever seen.

“We’ve had brief scares with viruses in the past from a global perspective,” Brown said, referencing H1N1, SARS and MERS. “[They] seem to be a little easier to contain than coronavirus is.”

Brown, the director of hospital medicine and chief of staff at Tift Regional Medical Center, was part of the initial planning at the hospital that started months ago as the first news stories broke about COVID-19 reaching the United States.

“Our administration and senior leadership have been planning for the arrival of COVID-19 for several months,” said Brown. “As we started seeing patients, we increased the amount of planning and adjusted our schedules to meet the demands of managing a hospital this size.

“We particularly became worried when we began seeing the problems hospitals were having in Seattle,” said Brown. “Then the unfortunate experience hospitals in Italy had.”

Since reporting its first case on Jan. 31, Italy has had more than 23,000 patients die from COVID-19, with more than 178,000 confirmed cases.

In the early weeks of COVID-19 coming to the United States, Washington was one of the hardest hit states, having the highest number of confirmed cases until mid-March, partially due to a nursing home in a Seattle suburb.

The planning at TRMC centered around how COVID-19 patents could be safely housed, where they could be placed in the hospital and what personal protective equipment, or PPE, would be needed.

When the first cases started coming in, they shut down elective surgeries, a move that many hospitals across the country have implemented.

They also consulted Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization guidelines for treatment regimens and the use and conservations of PPE.

“One of the things we did that has been very beneficial for the organization…is we implemented trained overseers to assist staff with putting on and taking off the PPE,” said Brown. “Having these trained observers increased safety for our staff and our patients.”

Personal protective equipment includes masks, gloves, aprons/gowns and a face shield.

“Every time you go into a patient’s room, you’re required to wear all of that material to protect yourself,” said Brown. “You have to put on new equipment every time.”

“Our administration has done a nice job finding us personal protective equipment,” he added. “We’ve also had some generous donors in the community donate PPE items and people making cloth masks for health care workers.”

On Mar. 30, the hospitals started requiring all patients to wear cloth masks.

“We did this in hopes of preventing spread among our healthcare workers,” said Brown. “This disease is often spread in the asymptomatic phase.”

Part of what makes the fight against COVID-19 so difficult is its long asymptomatic incubation period, during which people carrying the virus can spread it to other people despite having no symptoms.

For comparison, the incubation period for the seasonal flu is 1-2 days from time of infection to showing symptoms.

The incubation period for COVID-19 can last up to 14 days. During that two-week period, carriers of the virus can spread it to the people around them, all while not even knowing they have the virus.

“One of the problems with this disease is that it’s highly transmissible even when they are asymptomatic,” said Brown. “This virus is spread sometimes by talking or coughing.”

One of the things they needed to plan for was testing — how could they safely test and screen patients who had coronavirus symptoms without potentially exposing other people in the hospital.

Their solution was two-fold.

The hospital parking garage was turned into drive through testing facility.

People with symptoms of COVID-19 — fever, cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, and sometimes diarrhea — can call the hospital hotline to set up a test. The majority of the patients that have tested positive went through the mobile testing, Kaine said.

For possible positive cases that come through the hospital doors, the staff implemented a sorting system to quickly figure out which patients may have coronavirus and which probably don’t.

It’s complicated by the fact that the severity of COVID-19 symptoms can cover a wide spectrum.

“We have patients with mild symptoms all the way to patients [who are] physically unable to communicate with us…all the way to needing ventilators and life support,” Brown said.

“This disease process offers some unique challenges we haven’t seen before, including staffing, charting of patients, but particularly the disease process itself.

“The disease causes problems for patients that are challenging for physicians because we haven’t seen it before. The severity of the disease is such that they can be some of the sickest patients we’ve encountered. And the speed at which these patients can decline and the amount of resources it takes to treat them is particularly challenging. We’ve never seen this before, so it’s difficult to predict how patients will respond.”

There’s no FDA approved treatment for COVID-19, so patient care focuses on supporting the patient, helping them breathe, treating symptoms, keeping normal hydration and other supportive care.

“We don’t expect to see a vaccine until the latter part of the year or the beginning of next year,” said Brown. “And that would be optimistic to see it by then.”

Brown credits those weeks of planning with helping staff handle the influx of COVID-19 patients.

And the planning continues.

“We’re currently planning for a surge of coronavirus patients,” said Brown. “One of the things we’re doing is looking at places outside of the ICU where we can take care of surge patients.”

Brown expects the peak for COVID-19 cases in the Tift County area to be at the end of April, according to projections.

“As with any projection, that could change, but that’s what we’re planning,” said Brown.

“We’ll continue to see coronavirus infections well into May, maybe into June,” he added.

In the weeks and months to come, as the country, state and south Georgia continue to fight COVID-19, Brown advises adhering to CDC and WHO guidelines.

“The best thing we can be doing right now is continuing to practice social distancing,” said Brown. “Limit the number of people that group together at one time. It should be in small numbers. I’d encourage people to practice good hand hygiene and stay at home.”

Good hand hygiene includes people washing their hands multiple times a day, particularly when they’ve been outside the house to work or the grocery store. Carry a bottle of hand sanitizer and use it when necessary.

And stop touching your face, Brown added.

“If you do contaminate your hands, for example on a shopping cart, and you rub your eye or touch your mouth, you could be transferring the disease,” Brown said.

While the virus takes its toll on patients, fighting the virus takes its toll on medical staff.

“Staff morale is holding up,” said Brown. “To take care of the patient, particularly the critical ones, is very labor intensive for the nursing staff and physicians, nurse practitioners and physicians assistants.”

Community members and organizations have offered support to medical staff in a number of ways: bringing in food, making masks and gowns, voicing their support.

“I can’t say enough about the community support and how fantastic it’s been,” Brown said.

Anyone interested in making masks, can call 229-238-2596 or 229-520-1654 for supplies.

The hospital’s foundation has set up a fund for people who want to donate money for employee meals and help. That can be done at www.trmcf.com.