The sickest all had red eyes, says nurse on front lines of coronavirus pandemic – SF Gate

A telltale ticket of COVID-19?

By Mike Moffitt, SFGATE

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3: 02 pm PDT, Wednesday, March 25, 2020

A extinct registered nurse who handled COVID-19 sufferers in Washington grunt acknowledged the sickest all looked to contain one thing in smartly-liked — redness around the eyes.

“Or now not it is one thing that I witnessed in all of them. They contain got, like … hypersensitivity eyes. The white phase of the peek is now not crimson. Or now not it is more like they contain crimson peek shadow on the outside of their eyes,” Chelsey Earnest immediate CNN on Monday.

The Centers for Disease Alter and Prevention for the time being does checklist conjunctivitis or peek redness as a symptom of COVID-19.

Earnest was as soon as working on the Existence Care Heart in Kirkland in tedious February when the unconventional coronavirus rampaged thru the nursing home in the early stages of the pandemic. As a minimal 37 deaths are linked to the COVID-19 outbreak there. The moderate age of the deceased was as soon as 80.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) on Tuesday updated an alert warning that, essentially based fully on plenty of experiences, SARS-CoV-2 would possibly per chance presumably per chance additionally fair role off a “at ease follicular conjunctivitis in another case indistinguishable from other viral causes, and presumably be transmitted by aerosol contact with conjunctiva.”

Conjunctivitis, usually identified as pinkeye, is an inflammation of the conjunctiva, the mucous membrane that covers the front of the peek and strains the inside of the eyelids. It additionally can role off the skin around the eyes to alter into itchy and redden.

The AAO immediate ophthalmologists with sufferers who existing signs of conjunctivitis, shortness of breath, fever and cough to wear protective equipment including covering their mouth, nostril and eyes.

Earnest acknowledged on the Existence Care Heart, crimson eyes grew to alter into the most reliable ticket that a affected person had contracted the illness.

“I’ve even had the catastrophe clinical administration physician bellow, ‘End they contain the crimson eyes?’ And I will bellow yes. And he’ll bellow, ‘I will get dangle of you a mattress.’ Or now not it is beautiful one thing about this, the map that it affects these sufferers,” she acknowledged in the CNN interview.

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Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate