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zReportage.com Story of the Week #741: TUESDAY June 16, 2020 : LAST RESORT Against COVID-19 by San Antonio Express-News photographer Bob Owen. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015, Owen has worked at the Express-News for 37 years, primarily covering social issues. Reporter Lauren Caruba and photographer Bob Owen spent many hours reporting for this story in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at Northeast Baptist Hospital. At just 30, Nick Wilson was so sick with the coronavirus that even a ventilator wasn’t enough. His San Antonio doctors had to improvise against an unpredictable disease with the use of an ECMO. With Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), the lungs are removed from the equation. Large tubes are fed into arteries and veins so a machine can remove blood from the body and oxygenate it directly before returning it. Under the right conditions, it allows doctors to hit the pause button, giving a patient’s organs time to rest and recover. His case would illustrate the lengths to which health care workers have to go to fight an aggressive viral pneumonia that has proved an unpredictable, formidable opponent. It would also become a testament to the challenges and limitations they face.

Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press