Q & A with a medical professional about staying safe

The Eagle’s Eye interviewed Joana Castro, a travel unit specialist for Ascension and the UT Dell Medical Center, about what it is like to work with COVID-19 patients.

Eagle’s Eye: What advice would you give to help prevent someone from catching COVID-19?

Joana Castro: My advice would be for them to try to avoid large groups of gatherings, I understand that people have to go to grocery stores, they have to go to work and be about at times, we can’t really just stay home. So my advice would be to wear a mask. Try to avoid, like I said, a large gathering of more than 10 people. Eating healthy, lots of vitamin C and vitamin D, and just, you know, try not to consume yourself mentally in thinking about COVID constantly, because that’s also not healthy.

EE: How has working with COVID patients affected your mental health?

JC: I think it really hasn’t affected me in a bad way. In the beginning, it was scary. Just because we didn’t really know too much about the virus. I had severe anxiety from it, stress, just fear of being around the virus around people who have had it but it just kind of made us realize that we h ave to treat it as if it was a flu virus. As with any virus, you have to protect yourself. I enjoy what I do actually. Because it kind of makes you see the people that you’re working with, it gives you more compassion for them, it makes you develop more empathy for the people who are sick and makes you a better person.

EE: How do you make sure to stay safe as a professional outside of work?

JC: I try to avoid going out period. As healthcare workers, we know the risks that we can bring to the facilities if we are out. And we really don’t know who we could come in contact with that may have COVID or may have had it. I try to stay home, I try to avoid going to places that I really don’t need to be. I avoid family gatherings as much as I like being around them, I try to avoid them. And I would practice washing my hands constantly. And wearing face masks if I do have to go to the store. And just the basic safety procedure guidelines that we ask everybody else to use.

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I try to avoid going out period.

— Joana Castro

EE: How concerned are you about the new strains of COVID?

JC: From the beginning, the only thing that does concern me is with a lot of the younger generation, I understand them because they’re young, they do want to go places. They’re extremely tired, having to do online classes and just not being able to hang out with their friends as much as they would want to. So my concern would be that as the surges go up, I see more and more people out. And that’s my concern right now. They’re not really taking it seriously. But when we start to reach maximum capacity in hospitals again, the younger generation will start to see that even their own family members may be getting sick. Maybe they’ll learn from that. But right now, that’s my biggest concern that I think guidelines have to continue to stay where they’re at stage five, at least, until we know, for sure, in a couple of months that this new strain is not going to cause a bigger surge in the virus.

EE: When do you think things will go back to normal?

JC: Personally, I feel like things are starting to head in that direction slowly, just because with all the vaccines that are coming out, and there have already been several hundreds of people taking the vaccine, especially around the healthcare system. I would say that towards the end of this year. Slowly I feel like we’re making a lot of progress. And the surge will start to decline and people will eventually build immunity to whether they take the vaccine or not. I feel like we’ve been around the virus for a little over a year now. And I feel like we are already developing immunity to the virus slowly.