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Florida Today - COVID doctors look back on pandemic five years later: 'Lines wrapped around the building'

Patients lining hospital hallways on ventilators. Personal protective equipment running low. Doctors and nurses working all hours to keep the COVID-19 pandemic from spinning even further out of control while also trying to protect themselves from infection.

Those images have remained vivid with frontline workers even from the distance of five years that have passed. At the time, hundreds of patients were filling up the hospitals and urgent care centers where those infected with the virus were seeking help. 

When the pandemic first struck in March of 2020, its effects in Brevard County continued for more than a year as cases struck in waves. By spring of the following year, the county’s hospitals continued to operate at capacity, setting up triage tents outside, cancelling all elective procedures and assigning special wings of their facilities solely to treating COVID-19 patients.Doctors and nurses at the time spoke about healthcare workers across the system being pushed to their capacity as hospitals filled up. 

Dr. David Williams, who runs the urgent care clinic chain MedFast, was among those healthcare workers in the fray of the pandemic response. The inundation of patients on the healthcare system was something he and his colleagues won’t ever forget. 

“We had lines outside that wrapped around the building and these were very sick people,” Williams said. “It was massive lines of people with fevers and COVID symptoms."Williams described the feeling at the time, before vaccinations and other treatments curtailed the severity of the virus, as one of helplessness.“It was overwhelming how to deal with patients at the time,” he said.

Before the advent of the vaccine, the number of cases began to rise faster than patients could be treated, putting further strain on health care resources and professionals. By the time patients could be treated and released, there was often little to no downtime before new patients were admitted to take the newly opened beds at facilities around the county.The men and women at the frontlines of treating COVID during that time ― when the pandemic was at its height ― represented the best of the healthcare industry, Williams said.

“People were scared because they didn’t know how it would affect them. It was a scary time for everyone in our industry,” Williams said. “But they did what doctors and nurses do. They took care of sick people.”

Dr. Ashish Udeshi, a past president of the Brevard County Medical Society who worked on the front lines during COVID, said the height of the pandemic wads like working through a “tidal wave” for healthcare professionals. 

“Our doctors and nurses were just trying to keep their heads above water during those years,” Adeshi said. 

Tyler Vazquez is the Brevard County Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Vazquez at 321-480-0854 or tvazquez@floridatoday.com.

Florida Today - COVID doctors look back on pandemic five years later: 'Lines wrapped around the building