THREE doctors, TWO countries, ONE enemy

Another type of medicine Zhang has resorted to is antibiotics.

"Technically, you don't need antibiotics to combat a virus. But COVID-19 weakens one's immune system, making the patient more susceptible for a bacterial infection, bacterial pneumonia for example which aggravates the situation. That's why we need antibiotics," she says.

But not everyone agrees with this approach, says Pang.

"Some US doctors may opt to give antibiotics to patients with weaker immune systems-old people, for example-but most would be reluctant to dispense it to young patients with no apparent underlying problems," she said.

Reflecting on the controversy surrounding certain medicines, Pang believes that the knowledge gained about a medicine is inevitably shaped by the circumstances under which it is administered.

"Here in the US, with rare exceptions, most COVID-19 patients have received hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in the hospital, when their condition has become serious enough for them to be admitted. Therefore, the conclusion that a medicine has little effect may hold more truth for a specific group of people, instead of all who are infected."

David Ho, one of the leading AIDS researchers and virologists in the United States, best known for his therapy combining multiple medications that enhance and complement one another, says the same approach would work for COVID-19. Patients should be treated with this approach at the onset of symptoms, not later, he says.

But only if the reality on the ground would allow for that.

"Take hydroxychloroquine for example," Jiang the ICU doctor says. "We did notice that the drugs had little positive effect on our most severe patients. But what could we do? We were short of drugs and could not possibly give them to everyone in need, including those for whom the drugs may hold greater promise. At the end of the day the most critical patients were still our top priority."

Jiang lives in Queens, New York, a borough populated by working class and immigrant families, and has some of the areas the pandemic has hit hardest.

"One day in April the building's plumber, who comes from Costa Rica, came to my room to do some repairs. He told me that many people in our building had been infected, resulting in multiple deaths within one family.