St. Joe’s doctor on call around the clock
The Spectator is writing a series of profiles about those who can’t self-isolate during the pandemic
On New Year’s Eve, as he said goodbye to 2019 and cooked dinner at home, Dr. Zain Chagla received a clue about something ominous overseas.
That night, while checking his email, the St. Joseph’s Healthcare infectious disease doctor read a routine update for colleagues in the field around the world.
Near the end of the message was a brief item describing a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China thought to have originated at a seafood market.
“China is known for having novel influenza outbreaks,” said Chagla. “It was one of those things where you think: interesting. Should keep an eye on that.”
At the time Chagla was focused on tracking an Ebola virus threat in Central Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and making contingencies in the event a patient showed in Hamilton with the deadly disease.
Twenty-six days after that email, Canada had its first confirmed case of COVID-19.
And today, nearly four months after that email, Chagla wears several hats on the pandemic front line in Hamilton.
He is part of the global effort to research treatment options for COVID-19 patients, while working on the St. Joe’s infection control team to curb spread of the virus. He’s still managing his regular caseload of non-COVID-19 infectious disease patients who suffer from infections of the blood and heart.
By day he’s in the hospital treating patients, and by night — often past midnight — he logs research hours, including assimilating and discussing clinical trials with colleagues to develop policies and guidelines for patients with COVID-19 and to protect health-care workers.
For an infectious disease specialist accustomed to caring for patients with conditions he knows how to treat, COVID-19 has been frustrating, when all doctors can do is offer support through the cycle of the infection.
“In that sense if feels like you’re practising medicine from 100 years ago,” he said. “There is anxiety and discomfort with that situation.”
Chagla has also been participating in COVID-19 roundtables with specialists in Ontario and across Canada, as chair of the Section of Infectious Diseases with the Ontario Medical Association.
He grew up in London, Ont., where he studied medicine at Western University.
He was also educated at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and spent four months in 2013 during that program studying in Tanzania and Uganda — a formative experience that he said shaped his career.
During COVID-19, St. Joe’s has offered Chagla up as a voice of authority to journalists to discuss the pandemic to better educate the public.
He believes it’s critical to debunk misinformation found on social media and elsewhere about virus treatments and methods of infection.
Chagla said it’s an area he never imagined being part of the job when he was a medical student.
“But this is an era where you can have journals publishing articles that are not peer reviewed, or accurate, and people can publish what they want on (Twitter) in 80 characters or less.”