What if we contracted the virus? What if we spread it to our loved ones at home? We soon realised that the fear was universal and palpable. We could not fathom the devastation SARS had, but knew the impending outbreak was going to be worse.Īlong with the excitement of being of service during what we thought was an opportunity of a lifetime, came with it the unfeigned fear. When some of us were scrubbed up for a spine surgery with our senior consultant, who was also the orthopaedic HOD in 2003, with a somber voice, he started sharing some of the stories and the sacrifices of the doctors and nurses then. When our stoic head of department (HOD) got choked up when he was sharing about the passing of his close colleague during the SARS fight, there was pin drop silence amongst the juniors. As days progressed, through the cracks that started appearing on their previously composed facades, we increasingly caught glimpses of the mix of panic with streaks of nervousness and fear in the eyes of our seniors. We saw a staged deterioration in the grim faces of senior doctors who had lived through the trying SARS period. With the first imported COVID-19 case on Janu2, and Februseeing our nation’s first locally transmitted case, hospital management realised that an outbreak was imminent. We were ignorant on the impact this deadly virus had on our healthcare system until the first few cases of its much more contagious cousin hit our shores in early 2020. Many of the junior doctors from the department, were all in our late teens or just out of high school when SARS hit our nation in 2003 1.
0 kommentar(er)
