Coronavirus Q&A: West Islip Doctor ​Diane Peterman

LONG ISLAND, NY — The new coronavirus has changed the way Long Islanders live. In this new and confusing time, the coronavirus outbreak has caused a lot of confusion and brought anxiety to many local residents. While there are social distancing guidelines and new rules put almost every day to help stop the spread of the virus, Long Island continues to see a growing number of positive cases for the virus every day. As of Wednesday, there are a total of 23,368 coronavirus cases in Suffolk County and 25,250 in Nassau County.

To answer some of the questions surrounding the illness, Patch spoke to Dr. Diane Peterman, who previously worked as an emergency medical doctor for 26 years and is currently the site director at Urgent Care in West Islip. This location is one of 11 ProHealth facilities across Long Island currently providing testing for the coronavirus.

Check out the Q&A with Dr. Peterman below:

Patch: Can you describe the testing process for this virus?

Peterman: At our Urgent Care at ProHealth in West Islip, we have been testing all first responders that come in. We also have appointments every 15 minutes. We basically are seeing the suspected COVID patients out in their cars because it's much safer for everybody. We do vital signs on them in the car, we listen to their heart and lungs, then we do testing when appropriate.

Patch: About how many people are you testing at this facility per day?

Peterman: We're seeing between 70 to 100 patients and probably there are about 60 tests going out per day.

Patch: What's the most common misconception surrounding the COVID testing?

Peterman: There are rapid tests now that are not too available, so they're very, very limited. And then there are tests that we swab and sent out to the lab. The misconception mostly is that people think they're going to get the results right away or in a short period of time. Sometimes it could be three days when we get a results back and sometimes it can take up to 10 days. So it's a little bit frustrating for people when they are getting their results because a lot of people think they're going to get a rapid test immediately.

Patch: What's the next step after testing?

Peterman: We have a very a very high infection rate in Suffolk County so most people that come to us have symptoms such as cough, fever, chills, sweat, diarrhea, loss of taste or loss of smell; so they're very symptomatic or they have been directly exposed to somebody who was positive. Basically, we tell them we're treating them as if they are positive until proven otherwise. We tell them to self-quarantine and drink plenty of fluids. I also tell people to get plenty of sunshine, sunshine is very important. Make sure you are taking big breaths and you're not just sitting there. Walking is really good for you because it expands your lungs and this disease tends to affect the lungs. So getting fresh air is actually very good for fighting this disease.

Patch: What do you think most people not understand about this disease?

Peterman: I don't think people understand that it can spread so quickly and that it's so much more contagious than other illnesses like pneumonia or the flu. So if people have mild symptoms they think they can't really spread the disease, but they really can. I don't think that people take it serious how they might not be so sick or their children might not be so sick, but they could come in contact with somebody who is elderly or diabetic or who has preexisting conditions such as asthma, COPD, hypertension or any autoimmune disease and that they could be so poorly affected by that disease and have a very bad outcome. I think some people think they're invisible or they're fine and they don't take proper precautions and they're not home or self-quarantining like they should.

Patch: What are some of differences between the flu and the coronavirus?

Peterman: The flu is pretty much gone, it pretty much ends by this time of year. So we don't really have any flu cases and the Centers for Disease Control doesn't even recommend testing for the flu at this point. Earlier on when it was still flu season, we were testing for the flu. They can have very similar symptoms but the flu is usually very high fever, body aches, sweat not so much the dry cough that people are getting, that classic dry cough. The most common complaint I've been getting is feeling like you just can't get that breath in, you don't really feel that with the flu. Other symptoms include a lot of gastrointestinal symptoms that are popping up, which you don't typically see with the flu. It's very different. You could feel very flu-like at first, with body aches and chills and sweat, that's the similarity, but the dry cough, that feeling like you can't get your breath in, that's very different.

Patch: What precautions are being taken at this facility to help keep patients safe?

Peterman: We're trying to keep our site clean, which why we're going out in our proper PPE and going out to the cars. We actually do the vital signs in the car, we listen to the heart and lungs, we look at the throat, we're able to do all of that in the car. Then we're keeping our site open for people that need to come in for non-COVID related illness such as lacerations, fractures, a rash, poison ivy or simple things we can also see during this time. We're trying to protect those patients and we're trying to keep our COVID exposed patients outside. Honestly people love it, most people don't mind being seen in the car they feel safer than going inside to an office that may have been contaminated by another COVID patient. We're definitely trying to keep it open. People are afraid to come in, so we're not seeing quite as many patients as normal. But I had a laceration, I had to do an abscess, I had a young guy who had appendicitis and those are the type of people we bring in so we can do a full evaluation.

Patch: What other preventative measures are you taking personally?

Peterman: For us, if I see a patient in the car, I go back in and I change my PPE. I wash my hands and I change my gloves after every patient. If I have to reuse them, I'm always careful that they're properly sanitize before I go to see another patient so I would never expose another patient with my gloves that I used on another patient. I tell people, the most important thing is to just wash your hands. I wash my hands about 100 times a day. It's just the way you can stop the spread. The government is right, not every needs an N95 mask. But, if you are outside or in the grocery store with other people just put something over your mouth to protect you. I'm not as scared at work because I know I'm properly protected, but I went to the store for the first time and it's really scary to me that people are walking around with no masks, no gloves, no social distancing at a grocery store. This is so much more contagious, so it's so much easier to spread this. So if someone breathes on a roll of paper towels, it can live on there.

Patch: What's the best way for people to prevent spreading this disease?

Peterman: The most important thing is that non-essential personnel need to stay home because that is the only way we are going to get rid of this virus. When I'm home I hardly even go out myself, I went to the store once in three weeks. I try to stay home and quarantine the family. There not that's not many things you need to get out for, just once in a while to get some groceries. You can go outside for a walk, I tell everybody just go for a walk, get some fresh air in your neighborhood just stay six feet away. If everybody listened to the government and everybody stayed home for three weeks to a month, we would practically eliminate this virus, that's just my feeling on this. I just feel like there's so many non-essential personnel that are out and about and they may be asymptomatic carriers and might be spreading it. That scares me.

Patch: What advice would you give to essential workers who can't stay home at this time?

Peterman: It's very hard for essential workers and I'm very glad they're getting more PPE. I know they're trying to do different scheduling, seven days on and seven days off, they're trying to find different ways to keep people healthy, but I think just getting reinforcements to help our burnt-out workers or people who are infected and then have to be quarantined and just getting them the proper PPE. Having been an ER doc for so many years, I talk to my fellow physicians and nurses in the ICU and they tell me that they're reusing their N95s for three days and they're soaking wet. They also have to re-wear gowns because of the shortage because of people who are hoarding them who don't need them. I'm a touchy-feely physician, so before this I would always touch my patients to let them know it's going to be okay. It's very hard not to be able to do that anymore. It's heartbreaking really because sometimes patients just need them. And now physicians can't even lay a hand on them to say "listen, just relax you're going to be ok," because they don't have the proper PPE. So I think just wearing the proper PPE and when you're off, just getting as much fresh air as you can. Sun is really the enemy for the virus. I tell all my patients if it's sunny out just sit outside in the sun for 20 minutes and get some fresh sunlight. Vitamin D is really good and the sun is like a natural anti-viral.

Patch: What should someone do if they receive a positive result from the coronavirus test?

Peterman: I've been doing some of these callbacks for patients whether they're positive or negative. Most of the time when I tell patients, they're very anxious about it. Some people already know they have it. If we see 70 patients a day, 65 of those patients are going to be okay because they have mild symptoms. There's going to be 5 patients that may have trouble breathing or shortness of breath or very high fever or have underlying diseases that are going to make this more difficult for them to fight. I try to reassure people as much as I can. I always ask "how are you feeling? how are you breathing? how high is your fever? are you able to eat?" The most important thing is to just stay home and hydrate, you're going to get through this. Ninety-five percent of people are going to get through this fine. Most people are able to talk and not having difficulty. If your breathing is getting really labored or you feel like you can't catch your breath, that's the time to go to the emergency department. Otherwise just stay home and try to fight it out. There's a level of anxiety to this disease so some people come in and they say "I don't know if I'm anxious or I can't breathe or I'm just feeling so anxious that I can't get a big breath in" and that's a real part of this disease. Most of the time people are good. Unfortunately there have been a few times where I had to call people and they're in the hospital on a respirator. That's a very rare case like maybe less than one percent of the patients we see. And I tell them there's no guarantee of which way this is going to go. You could come here and be totally fine and then in three days you can get a lot worse. You have to have look for worsening breathing, difficulty eating, vomiting where you're not keeping anything in or you're completely dehydrated. These are things you need to go to the emergency department for. Otherwise, the emergency departments are getting overwhelmed so we're trying to keep patients out if we can.

Patch: Is there any medication that someone with coronavirus could take to help with the symptoms?

Peterman: I think it's always changing. We didn't really know enough about this virus to know what's going to work or what's not going to work. I mean at first everyone was saying to take Zithromax because they do sometimes give this to people with COPD or asthma because it does have some anti-inflammatory properties. But then they kind of disproved that, so now they're doing studies with the Plaquenil and there's Doxycycline and now they're adding steroids which they said wasn't good at first. It's changing so much and I don't know there's enough real proof that anything is working. I know for the more severe patients they're going to try these, which makes total sense. But when patients just ask me for medication and they're feeling fine and breathing fine, I try to encourage them not to take it. If they meet the criteria or are in the hospital they should be reserved for them. I think until we know more it's hard to tell what's going to work and what's not going to work. And I think we're creating almost a mass hysteria that people are in line at CVS trying to buy a Z-pack but we really don't know enough to say "yes, this is the definitive."

Patch: What should someone who tested positive do to help prevent spreading it to the people they live with?

Peterman: Some patients come in and they have 10 people in their house and they really can't quite self-quarantine too well. I tell people if they have two levels in their house, they person who has the disease should stay on one level and the person who doesn't should be on the other level. Or the quarantine person they may be able to quarantine somewhere else that is more isolated, not in their house. If there are elderly people in their house and a young person gets it, I try to see if there is any place out they can stay. Wear a mask if you have to come down to the kitchen, try not to share a bathroom and then just again, hand washing. Wiping everything down. That's the best way to prevent it.

Patch: Do you have any other advice or message you want to share?

Peterman: Stay safe everyone! Wash your hands and please, please social distance and really listen to what your providers are telling you because we are telling you this to save your life!