had been diagnosed with the virus in the US. No instances of community spread had yet been reported on US soil.
The virus had infected at least 1,390,511 and killed 80,759 globally. The US now had the worst outbreak worldwide. The city of Wuhan in China's Hubei province, where COVID-19 is believed to have originated, was just"When I walked through the halls I could tell which rooms the coronavirus patients were in because of the PPE that the people had on, so I would know," McDevitt told Business Insider of her stay in the hospital.
Elaine McDevitt visits with her husband, Tom son, Mark and daughter, Elyse, at Jefferson University Hospitals before it banned visitors.McDevitt said her husband, Tom, and daughter, Elyse, still visited her to celebrate her birthday as she wouldn't see them for weeks while she remained in the hospital.
Dr. René Alvarez, the cardiologist who diagnosed McDevitt with Cardiac Sarcoidosis, told Business Insider that Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals were fortunate in that they weren't facing an imminent shortage in N95 masks, gowns, or other protective equipment needed to protect patients and medical workers from infection.
At Jefferson, doctors no longer came to their patient's bedside unless it was absolutely necessary. Instead, they stood in the doorway to talk to their patients. On March 25, McDevitt was told doctors had found a potential organ donor. Her transplant specialist told her the good news from the doorway of her hospital room while she sat in her hospital room ready to eat lunch.
"You have individuals that — clearly — they can't wait," Dr. Howard Massey, the surgical director of cardiac transplantation at Jefferson University Hospital told Business Insider. "There was no way Elaine could wait to get a heart transplant. She was going to die and that was very evident. If there had been any way possible to delay this in her, we would have, but that was just not an option for her.
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