As hospital and health care staff across the country continue learning more about the transmission and spread of COVID-19, caregivers for coronavirus patients continue adapting to the changing needs and best practices for personal protective equipment (PPE).

As families are managing the restrictions that the COVID-19 pandemic presents, doctors at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt are urging parents to pay close attention to the behaviors of their children.

Lung disease experts at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and their colleagues have determined a key factor as to why COVID-19 appears to infect and sicken adults and older people preferentially while seeming to spare younger children.

People with thoracic cancers sickened by COVID-19 were especially vulnerable to deaths with a 35% mortality rate, according to early results from TERAVOLT, a global consortium that tracks outcomes among this vulnerable patient population.

During the first few weeks of the statewide stay-at-home order issued by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, physicians at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital saw a higher volume of pediatric traumas, including ATV accidents, dirt bike accidents and pellet gunshot wounds.

As Vanderbilt continues to care for COVID-19 patients, other care, including clinic visits and elective surgeries, begin again.

"I am so lucky to work every day with such an amazing group of people."