I am from Sweden. Born and raised. I work at a hospital. Psychiatry though, so I don't treat Covid-19 patients (yet).
Sweden had admitted they failed to protect the elderly in nursing homes (elderly care homes) properly. I find that bizarre, as those were recognized as the most vulnerable (but New York did the same or worse by forcing homes to take COVID infected elderly).
That may sound bizarre, crazy or whatever, but just last week one of our biggest hospitals in Stockholm sent an older woman home. She had covid-19, but only minor symptoms. However, this woman lives in an elderly care home so an entire section/unit has been locked down now to stop the spread...
Another "funny" thing with this Covid-19 thing is that they had 50 people working at a hospital tested a few weeks ago. 25 of of them were positive for Covid-19 and was immediately sent home. The majority of them had zero symptoms while some of them had minor symptoms like headache.
Up to that, they said that all hospital personnel should test themselves... But since that, they no longer test any personnel at all, because they can't risk to send people home. That being said, we're literally being forced to work until we have major symptoms. That's the only time we will ever be tested for Covid-19 too.
Damn, that is very odd. Well I guess we can count on the consistency for policies to be messed up everywhere :P No governments or medical systems are helping people get treated with vitamins and minerals... way to go on saving lives :/
Yeah, it's really horrible. They can't allow people to stay home because there aren't enough people to cover the gaps, so it's definitely a unique, odd and scary situation right now.
Another weird thing is that the hospital is currently in lockdown, sort of. We don't allow visits to any of the patients etc. That doesn't apply to the entire hospital though.
Our patients, in the psychiatry department, they are allowed to go home, visit their families, go out and stuff like that. I mean, we have no idea who they meet, but that seems to be totally fine...
Many of our patients are going home over the weekends for instance. They do some grocery shopping, they spend time with their families and then they are coming back to us again.
And, we don't have any safety equipment as we don't have any covid-19 patients (so far), and the only time we will ever use any form of safety equipment is if and when a patient have symptoms. Which is basically too late.
The more people that get the virus (not elderly or vulnerable) the better, as the immunity will rise and the elderly can end their voluntary isolation and not be infected by anyone.
Well, that is true, when it comes to these viruses in general. It's a bit too early to tell if you actually become immune or how long you will be immune in this case though.
WHO warned as late as April 24th that antibodies in the blood doesn't necessarily mean that the individual has developed immunity to the infection. We've seen people recovered from Covid-19 and become ill a second time as well. That might've been because they still had the virus the first time though, but it's not certain.
That being said, even if we become immune, it's extremely stupid to risk patients and hospital personnel by letting psychiatric patients go home and not be under lock down when the rest of the hospital is in lock down. If we become sick, we're basically doomed. There's not enough manpower to cover the gaps if we would stay home.
Which is also why they won't test us.