Update: Stay safe and keep your fingers crossed, Dr. Pace says
It was two months ago that we wrote about Dr. Ryland “Ry” Pace, Rappahannock County High School Class of 2000, a New York City-area emergency room physician who has been toiling at the epicenter of COVID-19.
During the earliest stages of the pandemic, before a single case of COVID-19 was reported in Rappahannock County, people in and around Gotham were already dying of the coronavirus every six minutes.
Dr. Pace’s hospital — the Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, NJ, a straight line west of the Lincoln and Holland tunnels that continuously drain Manhattan — was giving up more than its share of patients.
“We’re one of the biggest caseloads in New Jersey right now,” the ER doctor told the Rappahannock News in a late-night telephone interview. “Everybody here has it.”
Making matters worse, his hospital, like so many others, lacked personal protective equipment (PPEs) for its medical sta .
“There’s not enough supplies to go around,” Dr. Pace told us. “So my boss went out and bought some industrial masks and put respirator lters on them.”
Now, while preparing for a possible second wave of COVID-19, much has stabilized at Clara Maass.
“Things here are calming down,” Dr. Pace tells the News. “COVID cases are now way down.”
And life outside the hospital for the ER doctor’s family and neighbors is also slowly returning to normal.
“Things are starting to open up, so ngers crossed,” notes Dr. Pace, who hails from Slate Mills.
While the economy here is similarly starting to show life, the doctor points out that the nation’s No. 1 hot spot for COVID-19 infections has shifted south to Washington, D.C. and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs.
“Heard Rappahannock is starting to seeScoasMesu,
“Take care and stay safe.”