CLEVELAND — 3News has been getting hundreds of your questions about the coronavirus pandemic, and we've been asking various medical experts to answer them. On Thursday, Monica Robins spoke with Cuyahoga County Medical Director Heidi Gullett.
HOW DO WE TREAT OURSELVES AT HOME IF WE BECOME SYMPTOMATIC?
DR. GULLETT: "Talk to [your healthcare provider] about how to treat your symptoms. Only they know your personal medical history, and so it's important for them to work with you, with your chronic conditions you might have, and to ensure that it's safe for you to stay at home.
"We only want people coming to the hospital when they're very sick and need hospital-level care, but you need to communicate with your provider about when that may turn into a more serious situation. They will be able to give you the guidance on those symptomatic treatments."
HAVE ANY OF THE PEOPLE IN THE ICU WITH PNEUMONIA BEEN SENT HOME ALREADY?
DR. GULLETT: "In the coming days and weeks, I think we'll have more information emerging about what this syndrome looks like when people have the most severe manifestations of it. Until then, we're just learning as we go about how severe infections unfold, and the best treatments for them."
CAN YOU REUSE AN N95 MASK?
DR. GULLETT: "There are a number of labs working on guidance for the rest of us about how we can reuse [personal protective equipment], how we can sterilize it, and what is safe in terms of timelines for reuse of equipment. We are really trying to conserve our equipment, but we also don't want to unnecessarily that's actually contaminated and then further transfer the infection.
"I would say that this is evolving, and we're learning additional guidance day-by-day. There are several groups on the front line answering that question for us."
3NEWS CONNECT: Answering your coronavirus questions