TAMPA, Fla. — It hasn't been an easy fight, but doctors understand COVID-19 a lot better than they did a year ago
"We were always terrified about a viral pandemic that would sweep the globe," Dr. Kami Kim with USF Health and Tampa General Hospital said.
Kim says she and her colleagues have been watching two viral diseases for years.
"Coronavirus was one of the candidates, but the other one we were terrified of was influenza, because there can be some really bad influenzas out there," Kim said.
Nearly two years after the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic started, more patients are in the hospital, cases are rising and deaths will follow.
"We are prepared and we are concerned. We understand the virus and the disease itself more what we call the natural history of disease, but this variant is much more contagious than the last," Tampa General Hospital’s Emergency Room Director, Dr. Jason Wilson said.
While the nation finds itself in a 4th wave of the virus, treatments are giving doctors the upper hand.
"We have a better sense of who's going to get sick, who's not. Who needs treatments and what kind of treatments we have. All of those things we've gotten much better at than we were a year ago," Wilson said.
Convalescent plasma, Remdesivir, steroids, and antibody infusions have been used to treat COVID patients over the last year, but time has shown not all are effective.
"Convalescent plasma, plasma from patients who have had COVID, is not as effective in patients any longer. There's some thought that maybe the antibodies that people developed to fight the original COVID are not as effective," AdventHealth Tampa’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Doug Ross said.
Ross says the hospital mainly uses monoclonal antibody infusions to help treat patients. Steroids can be helpful as well in helping patients that need help breathing.
"They are effective, however, there's no doubt that the delta variant can create more severe infections in people. So we are being challenged because it is a tougher virus to fight," Ross said.
That’s why the White House is looking to develop anti-viral drugs to be used as mitigation. The science used to advance treatments for COVID-19 should help create a drug that can be used as a preventative measure. But doctors say drugs aren’t the only thing needed to contain a virus.
"I think you need to have education so people understand the measures, like what vaccines do, what public health is, and then you also have to develop better treatments, and including vaccines that are also preventative," Kim said.