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'Stay home and realize this is affecting people that you know': Doctor's family urges social distancing

Courtney Pittman's husband works at Phoebe Putney Hospital in Albany. He hasn't been able to come home in nearly two weeks.

MACON, Ga. — Courtney Pittman is at home, taking care of her two young boys, and right now, she's doing it alone.

Her husband is a doctor at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Dougherty County, one of the hottest COVID-19 hot spots in the state.

She says health care workers there are so busy, her husband can't leave the hospital anytime soon.

"He can't come home because he has to quarantine and he can't come home because he has to work," she said in a video posted to Facebook. "I mean, someone has to be out there."

In the background, you can hear her two children playing.

Those two boys, one 3 years old, the other 5, haven't seen their dad DeWitt in person in nearly two weeks.

"The hardest part is having to explain to the boys that dad can't come home right now and when they ask me, 'When is dad coming home?' I don't have the answer for them," she said.

DeWitt Pittman is an emergency medicine doctor at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, where healthcare workers are battling a mounting death toll and growing list of COVID-19 patients.

He's not returning to his family in Athens until the surge subsides to avoid potentially spreading the virus to his family and to help Phoebe Putney deal with the influx of cases.

According to a hospital release over the weekend, more than 100 inpatients had either confirmed cases of COVID-19 or were under investigation for it awaiting test results.

The death toll there has risen to 11, according to a release posted Tuesday.

Public health experts say social distancing can slow the spread of the virus and give doctors and nurses a leg up in the fight.

For Courtney Pittman and so many other healthcare families around the country, that advice is personal.

"I went and picked up curbside to go from a local restaurant yesterday with my mask and my gloves on, and there were tables full of people just sitting out and having a good time, groups of more than 10," she said in the video. "The longer people stay out and continue to ignore the rules, the longer my husband and hundreds of thousands of others have to stay and so just stay home, realize this is affecting people that you know."

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