In use continuously since March: the photo of a comforting doctor goes around the world

Tuesday 1 December 2020

In use continuously since March
The photo of a comforting doctor goes around the world

Joseph Varon has been on duty in a Houston hospital for more than 250 days. In the corona pandemic, the doctor and his team are working to the limit. A photo that touches millions of people around the world shows that humanity does not fall by the wayside.

A doctor wearing a protective suit comfortably holds an elderly patient in his arms on his 252th consecutive working day in a corona intensive care unit: last week a photographer from Getty Images took this scene at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas with the camera firmly. Since then, the photo with chief physician Joseph Varon has gone around the world on the Internet.

Varon told CNN that he had already worked 252 days without interruption when he saw the white-haired patient on Thanksgiving. The man tried to get out of bed. “I want to be with my wife,” said the older man, Varon loudly, through tears. He was very sorry: “I felt very sad, like him.” Eventually the patient stopped crying and felt better. There is hope for the elderly patient: according to Varon, he should be discharged by the end of the week.

Many patients put isolation to mind in corona ICUs, Varon said. “You are in a room where people only enter in space suits,” explained the doctor. “Some patients try to escape. Someone recently tried to escape through the window.” Patients felt isolated in the isolated intensive care unit, “they just want to leave”.

Varon also told CNN the enormous burden that working at Houston’s Covid Station places on staff. “My nurses break down, some cry in the middle of the day because they feel sad about situations like this,” Varon said.

In the CNN interview, the doctor also warned the American population to abide by hygiene rules: “People are out in bars, restaurants, malls. It’s crazy. People don’t listen and then they end up in my ward. intensive care”. When people finally did the right thing, health workers like him could finally relax.