How one Houston ER doc does her part to stay safe
Before leaving home for a shift at the emergency room, where most days she encounters at least one COVID-19 carrier, Dr. Alison Haddock carefully wraps her phone in Saran Wrap. If she’s careful — no bubbles, no wrinkles — she’ll be able to swipe right or left through the plastic all day. Often the touch ID even recognizes her thumbprint.
Such rituals are beginning to make sense not just for ER workers but, increasingly, for all Americans. On Aug. 2, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus coordinator, noted that the U.S. has entered “a new phase” of the coronavirus pandemic, with outbreaks “extraordinarily widespread.”
Since late June, Harris County has been stuck in the “severe” level of COVID-19 risk, with around 1,500 new cases reported most days. According to a UTAustin study in late July, if a Harris County school with 1,000 students, teachers and staff reopened then, it could expect between six and 19 people to arrive infected.
Staying home is safest, of course. But for those who can’t — for those who have to go to work in a world where they’re increasingly likely to be exposed to COVID-19 — masks, physical distancing and hand-washing are only a start. Birx suggested that in an area where COVID-19 transmission is common, households that include an at-risk member (someone over 65 or with an underlying medical condition) should consider wearing face masks even inside their own homes.
Increasingly, regular Houstonians
are asking the same questions that medical workers began considering months ago: How can we be sure we don’t bring the virus home? How can we keep our families safe?
So I asked Haddock, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Baylor College of Medicine what she does.
Leaving work
Before COVID-19, Haddock carried a water bottle in her
work bag. Now she leaves both the bottle and the bag at home.
Yes, she believes that the vast majority of COVID-19 cases are transmitted through the air, by inhaling bits of virus that someone else exhaled. But she still worries about the risk of touching a virusladen object and then touching her eye or nose or mouth — or of bringing a virus-y thing home.
After each shift, if she’s been carrying pens in her pocket, she makes sure to remove them. Those stay at work.
She removes her N95 mask and the goggles that she wears all shift to protect her eyes. She tries, hard, to remember not to touch the contact lenses she wears so her goggles will fit. And she tries even harder not to scratch her nose; after eight hours in a hard mask, it drives her crazy. But touching her nose is “super high-risk.”
She leaves her work shoes at work, and changes back into the shoes she wore on the way in that morning. If she’s remembered to bring a change of clothes — she tries — she changes out of her scrubs and into a set of car clothes. Then she dons a regular face mask, not an N95, for the walk to her car.
Once home, she unwraps her phone, leaving the Saran Wrap in her car’s trash. Time will kill any virus still clinging to it, and she’ll dispose of the wrap more thoroughly in a few days. If she could, before carrying the phone indoors, she’d rub with a disinfecting wipe, but it’s been months since she could reliably find those in a grocery store. So instead, she smears it with a smidge of hand sanitizer.
Instead of leaving the little bottle of Purel in the car, she carries it into the house with her. Leaving it in the car might mean it’s exposed to high heat, which would rob it of potency.
She changes out of her car clothes and puts her scrubs straight into the wash, making sure they don’t mix with other, safer laundry. Then she walks straight to the bathroom and showers immediately.
After the shower, she washes her hands one more time before, at last touching her contacts, scratching her nose, or hanging out with her husband.
He doesn’t have any risk factors, so she feels free not to wear a face mask inside their house. But some of her co-workers — people with elderly or very young family members — do.
Haddock and her husband don’t eat inside restaurants, but sometimes they’ll get food from a drive-thru. She hasn’t been inside a grocery store since March; they pick up their groceries curbside. She always wears a mask to pick up the food, and often wears sunglasses too — not just for glare, but as a layer of protection for her eyes.
Glasses are good that way, she thinks — especially the big wraparound kind. She also thinks more people should consider the kind of face shields that medical workers often wear. With a mask, they provide an additional layer of protection. Face shields alone are useful for exercising outdoors, she says. And they can provide at least some protection to people who can’t wear masks — people with breathing problems or autism — or for little kids.
“This stuff is hard,” she admits. She knows that people aren’t always perfect; there’s too much to remember, and we don’t have the right reflexes. She winces when she sees a well-meaning mask-wearer forget and remove the mask to sneeze.
But all those precautions are also important. “The more we can do to minimize transmission, the better it is for us all,” she says. “Our fates are interlocked.”