Tennessee Doctor Contracted Coronavirus While in COVID-19 Meeting at Work
BRUSH WITH DEATH
A Tennessee doctor became infected with the coronavirus while attending a meeting in March on mitigating the disease’s spread within the medical center at which he worked. Dr. Daniel Lewis, the chief medical officer at the hospital, developed a fever after being exposed to a co-worker who had a mild cough at the meeting. Lewis was hospitalized for over a month, spent 10 days unconscious on a ventilator, and later experienced complications including hallucinations, blood clots, and muscle atrophy that rendered him incapable of walking. Two months after leaving the hospital, Lewis continues to suffer from lung damage. “Coronavirus does not respect your person. You don’t have to be elderly,” Lewis said. “It’s an apolitical virus that can strike anyone. While there are certain risk factors that may predispose some people to being more ill than others, it can strike people like myself that otherwise were healthy.”