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Clarkston Medical Group seeing less severe side of COVID-19 patients

Published  April 13, 2020 12:19pm EDT
Health Works Sponsored by Henry Ford Health System
FOX 2 Detroit

(FOX 2) - The coronavirus pandemic includes a broad spectrum of symptoms and patients, many of whom, though, do not need to go to the hospital for treatment.

Dr. Erica Harding with Clarkston Medical Group knows that firsthand. She and her colleagues work at an RV sitting in their parking lot, conducting drive-up COVID-19 testing.

How doctors are treating patients who don’t need hospitalizations

While the worst of the COVID-19 fight is happening in hospitals, it's far from the only place that health care workers are operating.

So far, she says about 900 symptomatic patients have been tested here and more than 100 have tested positive. And most simply go home.

“The vast majority are treated at home. So we call them with results; we identify what symptoms they’re having. A lot of these people are sick, they don’t feel well at all – they’re having the cough, shortness of breath, chest pain – but they are actually able to stay home and they do just fine. So that’s kind of a reality. A lot of the stuff we see in the news is the things in the hospital, where there’s very sick people. But we really see the other end of it. Most people are treated at home and our most important priority is appropriate quarantine advice and just watching if the symptoms get worse,” Dr. Harding said.

Now, the goal is to start antibody testing, a blood test that will indicate if your body - your immune system - has been exposed to COVID-19 and built up a possible immunity.

“Once we get antibody testing, that’s going to be a way to tell if an employee has been exposed and already mounted a response in their immune system. And that would be somebody that might have no symptoms but then you could say, ‘You’ve already responded to COVID; you’ve already had it. So you’ll be safer to work with COVID positive patients.’”

Dr. Harding says they’re still waiting on a timeline for when they can start antibody testing.

Meanwhile, Beaumont Health is also starting an antibodies test, the largest serological study in the nation right now.

The initial goal with antibody testing is to help first responders get back to work and also help everyone understand the spread of this virus: who was exposed and showed no symptoms?

Right now we have no idea what the answer is to that question.