Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
Fox Nation went behind the scenes with doctors and nurses across the country to provide a glimpse inside the hospitals on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.
In "COVID Diaries," using cellphone videos and testimonials, health care workers documented their day-to-day lives treating patients and coping with extreme physical and mental exhaustion, as well as keeping their own families safe.
In the first episode, Dr. Cedric “Jamie” Rutland, a pulmonary and critical care physician based in Southern California, told Fox Nation that health care workers must face the hard reality that they may be a deadly threat to the very people that they are trying to save.
These scenes were captured during the week of April 15.
"When you go into their room, you can, for the first time ever, potentially take something from a patient's room and give it to a non-COVID patient and kill them," said Dr. Rutland. "And that is f---ing scary."
"That's not a feeling you're used to as a physician, you're not used to being the source of the disease... here is a time where you could passively make somebody's life worse just by entering that room. That's what's scary and difficult to deal with."
Dr. Earl Campbell III, at Yale University Medical Center, said that the demand for physicians is unprecedented.
"One of the most shocking aspects of this pandemic is seeing the utilization of specialists to cover the medicine floors, to cover the COVID floors, the COVID units, because in many places we're at a point where we need as many hands on deck as possible, no matter what your specialty is," he said. "That's just something I haven't seen in my medical career."
The doctors featured in "COVID Diaries" also observed that the health care system's focus on COVID-19 has pushed other urgent medical procedures to the sidelines -- with potentially devastating consequences for some patients.
STANFORD PROFESSOR: CORONAVIRUS INFECTION SUBSTANTIALLY MORE COMMON IN POPULATION THAN WE REALIZED
"One of the other things we've noticed in the hospitals is, although the COVID population has really taken over, a lot of the other things we normally see have dramatically decreased," said Dr. Ali Haider of Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Massachusetts.
"Cardiology patients, heart attacks, congestive heart failure, a lot of these people are just staying home and potentially getting really sick or even dying at home."
"Right now, it's eerily quiet when it comes to that front, but I suspect we're going to see a significant rebound at one point," he warned.
Though, despite all the challenges, there are moments of joy, as COVID patients leave the hospital after beating the virus.
"So they just called another 'Code Rocky' overhead, and it's anytime a COVID patient is getting discharged, they call a 'Code Rocky,' they play the Rocky-theme song and everybody gets together and they give them a round of applause. It's pretty cool," said Haider.
To watch all of the series "COVID Diaries," go to Fox Nation and sign up today.
And for more information on the coronavirus pandemic, watch "America Vs Virus" with Dr. Mehmet Oz, "Pandemics and Epidemics 101," with Dr. Nicole Saphier, a full-time practicing physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and "Fox Nation 101: Making Vaccines," with Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
LIMITED TIME OFFER, GET YOUR FIRST MONTH OF FOX NATION FOR $0.99
Fox Nation programs are viewable on-demand and from your mobile device app, but available only for Fox Nation subscribers. Go to Fox Nation to start a free trial and watch the extensive library from Tomi Lahren, Pete Hegseth, Abby Hornacek, Laura Ingraham, Greg Gutfeld, Judge Andrew Napolitano and many more of your favorite Fox News personalities.