After long shifts treating covid-19 patients in New York hospitals, emergency room doctor Calvin D. Sun goes home and works for another 45 minutes. He cleans. He peels off his shoes, scrubs his jacket and places his protective suit outdoors to bake in the sun. Finally, he takes a shower, hot and scouring, to eliminate any microbes that could cling to his body like invisible thorns.
This new homework is as stressful as it is tedious. A misstep could mean spreading a coronavirus infection to a loved one. “Even with 30 to 45 minutes of prep, coming back home and doing all this, I still am worried I screwed it up in some way,” said Sun, who shares an apartment with his mother, who has Parkinson’s disease.
Across the country, exhausted health-care workers have changed the rhythms of their daily lives — sleeping away from their families and performing meticulous cleansing rituals — to protect family members and roommates and keep the pathogen contained behind hospital doors.
Some avoid going home altogether because they live with elderly or immunity-compromised relatives.
About 200 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel are staying at the Four Seasons Hotel New York, for instance, which has pared down its thousand-dollar-a-night rooms to function as a medical dorm, said a spokesman. Hotel staffers check the temperature of each clinician entering the hotel. Instead of dining on room service, guests take boxed meals to their rooms. Bathrobes, extra pillows and throw blankets were removed to reduce the number of items that could be touched…
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