PHOENIX — Health care workers are bracing for another spike of coronavirus as cases continue to rise in Arizona.
Neva Farmer is an ICU nurse in a Valley hospital. Most of her shifts in 2020 have been spent helping those with the most severe cases of COVID-19.
“Taking care of people that I couldn’t fix was really, really difficult,” Farmer said.
Over summer, hospitals in Arizona were flooded with patients. The last few months have been slower, but cases have been rising again since October, which is making hospitals busy once again.
“We are like doubling cases every day again,” Farmer said.
Farmer and her fellow health care workers are gearing up, not only in protective gear for hours on end, but emotionally too.
“A lot of us are feeling kind of this burden like, can we really handle going through this again? Can we have those long shifts? Can we wear our P-100s for 13 hours again?” Farmer said.
Farmer said patients coming in are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and still dying.
Patients she treated before are also being readmitted for complications, and she’s seeing more people who had no signs.
“Patients had no idea, and all of a sudden they’re getting very, very sick and in a very short period of time and still passing away,” Farmer said.
Her concern now is that people are getting complacent about wearing masks, social distancing, and washing their hands.
“COVID is such a new virus that we don’t know exactly how it replicates. We don’t know what it likes or what it doesn’t like and that’s really difficult to treat,” Farmer said.
