Speaker 1: It's Monday, June. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America as
Speaker 1: we have shifted into a new phase in the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaker 1: I'll still give you updates on any new information about
Speaker 1: the virus and vaccine development, but I'll also be focusing
Speaker 1: on how cities, states, and industry is affected by the
Speaker 1: shutdown are opening back up. While the majority of people
Speaker 1: who contract COVID nineteen only developed mild symptoms, there are
Speaker 1: those extreme cases where the virus reeks havoc on the body.
Speaker 1: In one such story, we're hearing of a patient in
Speaker 1: her twenties who received a double lung transplant, the first
Speaker 1: of its kind in the US since the pandemic began.
Speaker 1: Tests confirmed that her lungs were beyond repair and she
Speaker 1: would not survive without a transplant. She is now recovering,
Speaker 1: but faces a long rehabilitation. Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine
Speaker 1: reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for more. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Lenny, thanks for having me. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you about a pretty interesting story in
Speaker 1: the coronavirus world. This is the story of an extreme case.
Speaker 1: And just so people know, the majority of people experience
Speaker 1: more mild symptoms. They don't get this bad. But that's
Speaker 1: what makes this thing so interesting. We just had news
Speaker 1: that the first of its kind in the United States,
Speaker 1: a patient received a double lung transplant because her lungs
Speaker 1: got so bad after having COVID nineteen. Let me tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about this story. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I mean, even among hospitalized patients, this woman was one
Speaker 1: of the more severe cases. She was in the ICU
Speaker 1: for two months. She was on a ventilator for many weeks.
Speaker 1: They even had to use ecmo with her, which is
Speaker 1: a device that takes the blood outside the body, puts
Speaker 1: oxygen in, and then routes it back into the body,
Speaker 1: sort of like a heart lung bypass machine and helps
Speaker 1: the heart pump it around. So she was really, really sick.
Speaker 1: Her lungs were so badly destroyed that her heart was
Speaker 1: starting to fail, her liberal was starting to fail. Other
Speaker 1: organs were involved, they weren't getting the oxygen they needed,
Speaker 1: and basically she would not have survived without this operation.
Speaker 1: One of the most surprising things about this story, specifically
Speaker 1: is that she was in her twenties. I think in
Speaker 1: her later twenties, but still she was very young. I
Speaker 1: was very surprised when they told us that. I thought
Speaker 1: she was going to be older than that. Now they
Speaker 1: won't put a double lung transplant generally into people in
Speaker 1: their seventies and eighties, but I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be somebody in their fifties, maybe sixties. So when
Speaker 1: they told us twenties, I was very surprised. She was
Speaker 1: on immuno suppressing drugs prior to getting sick for a
Speaker 1: condition that they didn't reveal in order to preserve her privacy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you didn't expect someone that young to get
Speaker 1: that severely ill. It may be because of these drugs,
Speaker 1: or there's previous condition, we don't know. But on top
Speaker 1: of that too, the doctor who was attending on her
Speaker 1: said that even though she was on those drugs, she
Speaker 1: really had no other serious underlying health conditions. For the
Speaker 1: most part, she was pretty healthy. So it would be
Speaker 1: very interesting to see if those immunosuppressants played a part
Speaker 1: in her getting so sick. But from the most part
Speaker 1: she was healthy. Is kind of our understanding of it.
Speaker 1: That's exactly our understanding of it. So it's a little
Speaker 1: bit unexpected in that way. Now, we do see these
Speaker 1: COVID cases that sort of come out of nowhere in
Speaker 1: people in their twenties and thirties and forties, who statistically
Speaker 1: are not the ones who are getting the most severe
Speaker 1: form of the disease. But you do anecdotally hear about
Speaker 1: some people who do get it. So we really don't
Speaker 1: know right now. You know, in a few weeks, hopefully
Speaker 1: you will be able to meet her and meet her
Speaker 1: family and find out more. There have been other lung
Speaker 1: transplants associated with COVID nineteen. This is the first one
Speaker 1: in the United States that we know of, but there's
Speaker 1: been one in Austria and China, I believe so some
Speaker 1: of those had different cases to them, obviously, but doctors
Speaker 1: are really interested, you know, just because in some very
Speaker 1: severe cases, this might be the way to go. You're
Speaker 1: gonna see this more often. I believe it will not
Speaker 1: become frequent by any stretch of the imagination. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be a way to take care of most people.
Speaker 1: But there are going to be a small number of
Speaker 1: people whose loans are so severely destroyed that they would
Speaker 1: never get off a ventilator. If it were not for transplant.
Speaker 1: I looked at a photo of her lungs and they
Speaker 1: were just demolished. The virus did such a number on her.
Speaker 1: She had secondary bacterial infections that they could not control
Speaker 1: with antibiotics because the blockages and her capillaries were so
Speaker 1: trashed that the drugs were just not reaching the infections
Speaker 1: and having any effect whatsoever. So you are from time
Speaker 1: to time going to see this kind of thing. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if you saw other organs transplanted as well.
Speaker 1: The doctor said that her lungs developed these strange holes
Speaker 1: that look like Swiss cheese. I saw some of the
Speaker 1: X rays as well, and it's just crazy to think
Speaker 1: of how this virus can affect the body in so
Speaker 1: many different ways. My understanding is also that she was
Speaker 1: on the organ transplant waiting list, thankfully not for very long,
Speaker 1: only for two days now. The organ transplant waiting list
Speaker 1: is prioritized by the sickest people, and in fact there's
Speaker 1: a category for people who are almost in an emergent situation.
Speaker 1: So my guests, without knowing for sure, is that she
Speaker 1: was moved quickly to the top of the list once
Speaker 1: she became eligible for a transplant, and that they got
Speaker 1: very lucky and found this local donor, both of whose
Speaker 1: lungs were made suitable for her. It's often hard to
Speaker 1: find lungs compared with kidneys and livers. There's not as
Speaker 1: many lung transplants in the United States even before COVID,
Speaker 1: and of course kidneys and livers you can do live
Speaker 1: donation loans. Of course you can't. This is a very
Speaker 1: extreme case, and I think for me that's why it's
Speaker 1: so interesting to know how far this virus can take people.
Speaker 1: You also helped write another piece just about other people
Speaker 1: that have been sick with coronavirus for more than sixty days.
Speaker 1: They don't know if it's the virus is living that long,
Speaker 1: or if it's just kind of it's gone away, but
Speaker 1: the effect that it had on their body has the
Speaker 1: symptoms kind of reoccurring. So that's kind of another aspect
Speaker 1: of this is that it lasts pretty long in some people.
Speaker 1: As you pointed out a few minutes ago, this is
Speaker 1: a very nasty virus, and what makes it so nasty
Speaker 1: is its ability to affect different people in different ways.
Speaker 1: So you have people who have a cute kidney injury
Speaker 1: you have people who have blood clots that travel to
Speaker 1: their brain or travel to their hearts. You have people
Speaker 1: whose lungs aren't destroyed. And now again anecdotally, we are
Speaker 1: hearing from people who continue to suffer symptoms for sixty
Speaker 1: or more days. And the symptoms sometimes come in waves
Speaker 1: where they're bad for a while, then they're good for
Speaker 1: a while, and they come back again. The symptoms come
Speaker 1: in ways, different kinds of symptoms each week, So for
Speaker 1: while they're suffering from stomach problems, for another week they're
Speaker 1: suffering from respiratory problems. So this virus, if it turns
Speaker 1: out to be the virus, is a very versatile bug
Speaker 1: that is affecting people in all kinds of different ways.
Speaker 1: And we just wrote a story today, as you said,
Speaker 1: the people who have had to endure this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff for six eight ninety days and don't know when
Speaker 1: that's gonna end. Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine reporter at
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. Stay well. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this is
Speaker 1: reopening America. Don't forget After today's big news stories, you
Speaker 1: can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast. Every
Speaker 1: Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcast