As a worldwide pandemic washes over the St. Louis region, the Washington University Medical Campus is eerily quiet. Most visitors, students, staff and research faculty are no longer on campus. Limited patients come to its medical buildings, as many appointments are taking place virtually on video screens.

But it’s another story in the COVID-19 wards of Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJH), where Washington University physicians are fighting an exhausting battle against a new, baffling and sometimes lethal disease with the help of the hospital’s nurses, other medical professionals and support staff.

To minimize the number of health-care workers exposed to the virus, most medical trainees at BJH — interns, residents and fellows — have been redeployed to care for other patients, and care teams have been pared down. Where six people previously might have entered a room to check on a patient, now only two or three go in.

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