It’s tough to tell COVID-19 from smoke inhalation symptoms — and flu season’s coming
The patients walk into Dr. Melissa Marshall’s community clinics in Northern California with the telltale symptoms. They’re having trouble breathing. It may even hurt to inhale. They have a cough, and the sore throat is definitely there.
A straight case of COVID-19? Not so fast. This is wildfire country.
Up and down the West Coast, hospitals and health facilities are reporting an influx of patients with problems most likely related to smoke inhalation. As fires rage largely uncontrolled amid dry heat and high winds, smoke and ash are settling on cities and towns up to hundreds of miles away, turning the sky orange or gray and making ordinary breathing difficult.
But that, Marshall said, is only part of the challenge. Facilities already strapped for testing supplies and personal protective equipment must first rule out COVID-19 in these patients, because many of the symptoms they have are the same as those caused by the virus.
“Obviously, there’s overlap in the symptoms,” said Marshall, the CEO of CommuniCare, a collection of six clinics in Yolo County that treats mostly underinsured and uninsured patients. “Any time someone comes in with even some of those symptoms, we ask ourselves, ‘Is it COVID?’ At the end of the day, clinically speaking, I still want to rule out the virus.”
The protocol is to treat the symptoms, whatever their cause, while recommending that the patient quarantine until test results for the virus come back, she said.
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It is a scene playing out in numerous hospitals. Administrators and physicians, finely attuned to COVID-19’s ability to spread quickly and wreak havoc, simply won’t take a chance when they recognize symptoms that could emanate from the virus.
“We’ve seen an increase in patients presenting to the emergency department with respiratory distress,” said Dr. Nanette Mickiewicz, president and CEO of Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz. “As this can also be a symptom of COVID-19, we’re treating these patients as we would any person under investigation for coronavirus until we can rule them out through our screening process.” During the workup, symptoms that are more specific to COVID-19, like fever, would become apparent.
For the workers at Dominican, the issue moved to the top of the list quickly. Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties have borne the brunt of the CZU Lightning Complex fires, which have burned more than 86,000 acres. Multiple tents erected outside the building serve as an extension of its ER waiting room. They also are used to perform what has come to be understood as an essential role: separating those with symptoms of COVID-19 from those without.
New patients have been arriving at NorthBay Healthcare’s two hospitals in Solano County with COVID-19-like symptoms that may actually be from smoke inhalation.
NorthBay’s intake process “calls for anyone with COVID characteristics to be handled as [a] patient under investigation for COVID, which means they’re separated, screened and managed by staff in special PPE,” said spokesperson Steve Huddleston. At the two hospitals, which have handled nearly 200 COVID-19 cases so far, the protocol is well established.
In the Southern Hemisphere, efforts to stop COVID-19’s spread also blocked transmission of the flu. Can a ‘twindemic’ be avoided up north as well?
Although the West Coast is now squarely in the most dangerous time of year for wildfires — generally September to December — another complication for health providers lies on the horizon: flu season.
The Southern Hemisphere, whose influenza trends during our summer months typically predict what’s to come for the U.S., has had very little of the disease this year, presumably because of restricted travel, social distancing and face masks. But it’s too early to be sure what the U.S. flu season will entail.
“You can start to see some cases of the flu in late October,” said Marshall, “and the reality is that it’s going to carry a number of characteristics that could also be symptomatic of COVID. And nothing changes: You have to rule it out, just to eliminate the risk.”
Mark Kreidler writes for Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation and is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
