It starts with pulling on head-to-toe protective gear. Then comes a brisk walk down a hospital corridor, triple-gloved hands pushing a rattling anesthesia cart toward a door that leads to a frightened patient, gasping for air.
Hundreds of times every week during this pandemic, doctors and nurses treating critically ill COVID-19 patients steel themselves for a procedure that remains anything but routine.
These are the intubators, the airway experts inserting ventilator breathing tubes that place them mere inches away from where the contagious virus lives. “You’re in COVID central when you’re intubating,” said Dr.
Roy Soto, an anesthesiologist at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. “They’re frequently coughing and gasping. With a vivid