Dr. Perez and team are keeping normal clinic hours and seeing all patients including aesthetic treatments and procedures.   For select visit types a Telemedicine visit is an option through your patient portal.  We are not testing nor treating any COVID-19 patients at our clinic.  The health and well-being of our patients and staff has and will always be our top priority.  We are taking measures at the clinic to keep everyone safe. There’s an increased schedule of disinfection and all patients are required to wear a mask.  It is also our responsibility as healthcare providers to provide patient guidance and continue care of routine visits, follow-ups, vaccine schedules, and addressing other medical issues. 

We want to assure you that we have been keeping up with the latest developments and guidelines with trusted medical resources. With the outpouring of information from social media and news outlets, Dr. Perez will be updating information below to address concerns we’ve been encountering:

August 2, 2020

Dear Patients,

The last four weeks have been eventful in the pandemic front.  Here are the points I think are worth passing on:

I received frequent updates from the hospitals Covid-19 committees.  Contrary to what the news media would have you believe, our hospitals in general have never reached capacity.  As a matter of fact, the Honor Health system has only been on an alert level and has never reached a crisis level.  It seems though as if the numbers of new infected are starting to plateau and the hospital admission rate and ventilator use is actually starting to decline.  This trend is seen state wide.

So far a handful of my patients (two, I’m aware of) have been hospitalized for Covid-19 and they are recovering slowly but are doing well.  We have also a subgroup of patients who are seeing lingering symptoms beyond the month mark, especially shortness of breath and fatigue.   If you had a high risk exposure you should quarantine 14 days, however if you acquire the disease the CDC states that you won’t be contagious any longer 10 days after the onset of symptoms.  The CDC feels so strongly about this that a negative test is no longer required to go back to work.  Please continue to use sound judgement and avoid putting yourself in situations that pose a clear risk for contagion.

We are slowly navigating our way out of this mess but there are still hurdles ahead.  The next challenge we face is the return of our children to school.  The reason why the Flu hits every year in the fall is not the weather as many may think.  One of the main factors is the return of kids to school and the widespread of the disease that this environment generates.  It would then appear like the logical approach would be to keep kids at home.  However, the consequences of such action can be equally devastating.  Upwards to 6 million kids get nutritional and mental health support from the public school system.  During this pandemic the socialization of the younger kids has been shattered and this has consequences that are yet to be understood.  We have also seen an unprecedented increase in drug abuse and suicides.  Parental abuse seems to be on the rise as well.  The quality of education received remotely is not standardized as every school district is trying to improvise and implement a program according to their resources.  I find it hard to see a clear right answer.  Regardless, I find comfort in the knowledge that kids still seem to be vastly unaffected by this disease except for exceptionally rare cases.

On the mortality front I think we have the most encouraging news: despite our fear of a possible surge following the increased number in new cases, the mortality rate saw a minimal uptick that it is now corrected again.  Enough time has passed now where we can start breathing a little easier for our worst fear has not come to be.  Back in March, we were seeing about 2,300 people dying daily from Covid-19 and now that number is down to the 900’s.  For reference, daily in the US, about 1,500 people die every day in nursing homes from all causes not Covid-19 related. We need to start living again before fear not Covid-19 kills us.