Report on the Difficulty in Infection Control and Treatment of Patients with Severe COVID-19 Pneumonia Who Required Assisted Ventilation and Ventilator Management at a Local Community-based Hospital in Japan

Our hospital was introduced in the media as the hospital at which the first patient who died of COVID-19 infection in Japan was hospitalized Patients with pneumonia associated with COVID-19 sometimes show rapid deterioration of the respiratory status, with a poor prognosis The cases encountered by us that we report here also needed intensive long-term respiratory management ARDS is an important pathological condition complicating COVID-19 pneumonia From the perspective of the continuing pathology of ARDS, we treated the patients with a steroid and sivelestat However, it became clear that the respiratory pathology in the patients could not be adequately addressed by the uniform treatment protocol for ARDS In conclusion, inpatient treatment in a local community-based small hospital without an ICU can be extremely difficult