Board Member Bruce Lo offers Emergency Physician insight on new COVID deaths study
Board member Bruce Lo, MD, FACEP spoke this week to WTVR-CBS 6 regarding the reasons behind why for every two deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S., a third American dies as a result of the pandemic. That's according to a new study led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“We see people who have strokes and heart attacks and I ask them ‘why didn’t you come into the emergency department sooner or seek help before having an emergency,’ and there was an overall fear of coming to the hospital for fear of getting COVID or potentially getting sicker,” Lo told reporter Tracy Sears.
He noted staff shortages at doctor’s offices and the lack of PPE, while improving, also hurt patients’ timely access to healthcare.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize they can do things via Telehealth or there are alternative ways to seek routine medical care,” Lo said.