Surgeon, UCF professor urges using caution
Says to follow health measures after wife falls ill
An Orlando-area surgeon is urging people to take seriously social distancing and other public health measures after a photo of his wife battling coronavirus went viral.
Sam Atallah, a practicing colon and rectal surgeon as well as a professor at UCF’s medical school, posted the selfie on Twitter Monday afternoon, showing him in medical scrubs and a mask with his wife in the background on a hospital bed.
Atallah wrote that it was right before his wife was transferred to the COVID-19 isolation ward at the Orlando-area hospital.
“Get well soon so we can celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary Friday,” Atallah wrote in the tweet. “Prayers.”
Atallah said Tuesday that he was not expecting the reaction he got after posting the photo. Just 24 hours later, the tweet had amassed more than 97,000 likes and 10,000 retweets.
“I guess it struck a collective cord of how even healthcare workers are powerless to protect their own family from the virus,” Atallah wrote in a message to the Orlando Sentinel Tuesday.
While he did not want to talk further about the virus or his wife’s condition, he said he wanted to make sure people take the virus and the mandates intended to minimize its spread seriously. Orange and Osceola counties are currently under stay-athome orders, while Seminole and Lake have ordered businesses to limit capacity and adopt distancing measures.
Atallah said he wanted to get “the message out that social distancing and hygiene measures … are so important.”
He specifically mentioned washing hands with soap. Health officials recommend doing so often, for at least 20 seconds, particularly after going out in public.
As of Tuesday afternoon, there are more than 6,300 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in Florida, and 77 people have died of the disease. In Orange County, four people have died and more than 360 confirmed cases have been reported.
Atallah is the the Director of Colorectal Surgery at Oviedo Medical Center and a surgeon at the region’s AdventHealth hospitals.