Arizona doctors optimistic for a peak and end to the COVID-19 spread

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PHOENIX - Doctors around the world are experiencing an influx of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, including those in the valley.

Local doctors tell FOX 10 they are expecting more patients over the next week, but say each day, they are learning something new about the disease.

One thing keeping them going, there is a peak and an end to this soon.

For now, doctors are screening patients before they get inside the hospital as well as compartmentalizing the hospitals.

“It is broken down to patients with respiratory illness that might have COVID-19, those are sick go to one place, those that aren’t go to another,” said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, emergency medicine physician at Valleywise Health.

He says doctors and researchers are learning what they can do better in case there is a "next time."

"What South Korea got right and what almost all of us are looking to for the future is that they checked a lot of people. If someone tested positive, they isolated that person, not the entire family,” he explained.

The lack of testing in the U.S. though forced medical professionals to tell patients to assume they have the virus, but he remains optimistic saying new tests will be here next week.

“It is going to be bad for another week or so and then drop down and hopefully by May or June it will be over," LoVecchio said.

Arizona doctors say the virus doesn’t do well in the heat. They say it lives at 50-70 degrees but when it hits 80 it is not living outside, and it is getting hotter here by the day.