Recently, I was talking with a longtime friend in Napa. Six months ago he acquired COVID-19 and got quite sick, was admitted to a high tech hospital in Redwood City, and put on a respiratory for a week.
He did not fit any co-morbidity definitions of overweight, smoker, drinker or diabetic. He was taken off the respiratory and was required to stay at the hospital for a week, during which he acquired a bizarre respiratory fungal infection, which then required several doses of antibiotic.
Fortunately, he recovered enough to be discharged. Unfortunately, he had to have several weeks of every kind of therapy to get him on his feet where he has improved to about 75% of normal.
Last week, and please bear with me, I was watching a program called “Forsenic Files.” The program discussed the most odd methods of finding the cause of Legionnaire’s disease.
The cause of the disease was the air conditioning system sitting on top of the 10-plus story hotel. The system had not been cleaned and sanitized for quite some time, and was pouring out thousands of droplets of the contaminated waste over the top of the building and to the street below at the front entrance.
Several of the people who contracted the disease, and a few who died, had never been in the hotel, ever. Those who were staying in the hotel and attending the convention did not acquire the disease, while in the hotel, they got it once they stepped out onto the street. None of the staff acquired the disease.
What is the point, you ask?
My friend told me that while at the hospital recuperating from contracting COVID-19, there was an air conditioner unit in his room blowing out the recycled air from the COVID-19 recovery unit into the air outside the building. Shortly after being in that room was when the fungal infection appeared in his lungs, delaying his recovery, and putting him on a respirator.
Having been sick with COVID-19 in January, but not as severely sick as my friend, I was also in a room at Sierra Nevada Hospital here in Grass Valley with an air-conditioner unit blowing out of a not-completely sealed window, and the temp in the room was constantly cooler than it should have been.
I have been a registered nurse for 34-plus years, 20 of them as a public health nurse, working in many venues. One of my favorite things to do is research. Topics like the “unknown sources of fungal diseases in hospital or clinic settings“ get me to thinking.
Here are a couple of questions I asked myself, and put in front of you.
1. Considering the severity of the “endemic-pandemic” and the constant resurgence of that virus for those who have already been vaccinated, is it possible that ventilating systems in hospitals, health care clinics and other kinds of facilities can be a potential cause for the recurrences and exacerbation among the younger, healthy populations, city, county, state, and nationwide?
2. Is there a law in any of those stated areas (as mentioned in the first question) that requires a regular sanitary cleansing of those air conditioning systems? Are they regularly enforced, and how often?
3. When was the last time Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital did a microscopic study of the holding tubs of contaminated dirty water, or any other facility for that matter?
Thank you for your patience. Hopefully this will stimulate some research by those who have the money and power, and require more thorough examination of all facilities that have large conditioning systems (including schools, hotels and airlines, which all have constant turn over of “passengers”).
Michael Driskill, RN, BSN, PHN, PMRS, Gene Therapy IV, Post-Surgical Home Care, lives in Grass Valley.
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Originally Appeared Here