Today's Coronavirus News

[ffutures]

Had a text from my doctor's surgery today - they're suspending all face to face GP appointments and switching to telephone consultations. No indication as to how long this is likely to last.

Comments

[joseph_teller]

Thats a state requirement kicking in (MA passed a bunch of new executive orders from our Governor last night).

[ffutures]

I don't know what the NHS has told doctors to do in the UK, but I know that they're trying to avoid bringing coronavirus patients into hospital etc. if they aren't in critical condition. It seems fairly logical, I just hope nobody dies as a result.

[vivdunstan]

I phoned up my health centre this morning to rearrange a face to face appointment to phone. On my cousin’s advice, a GP, who messaged me out of the blue on Saturday, extremely concerned that I stay away from health centres and hospitals as much as possible, given that I am permanently immunosuppressed and huge risk. Turned out my health centre were going to be cancelling that appointment and contacting me anyway, so they were grateful I’d phoned up. I now have a phone one in a couple of weeks, hopefully.

It’s not ideal because I was supposed to get a blood pressure check from the GP as part of the drug review and before giving me my new much needed prescription. But I have a home blood pressure machine here, have been using it, and can tell my GP the numbers. My cousin GP said that will be fine.

Meanwhile my husband is working at home already to protect me, only going out for essentials. Very strange, but copeable, so long as we don’t (well me specifically) get the lurgy.

[ffutures]

I think that there's bound to be a risk of the doctor missing something if a meeting isn't face to face, but given the circumstances it might still be less problematic than seeing patients.

[vivdunstan]

For immunosuppressed people like me the risk of face to face is almost certainly too high,

Scotland’s First Minister has just addressed the issue of immunosuppressed/immunocompromised patients n her latest briefing. It’s been woefully under addressed at a UK level.