State’s COVID wave could continue straining hospitals for weeks, health officials say
While COVID-19 cases and hospitalization rates appear to be declining in Washington state, there doesn’t appear to be a quick end to the overwhelming workload facing hospitals.
“Overall most of our trends are starting to show a decline,” said Lacy Fehrenbach, deputy secretary for COVID-19 Response with the state Department of Health, in a Wednesday update with reporters.
“However,” she added, “I want to be really clear that disease remains very high in Washington state.”
When asked when the state could turn a corner in its fifth COVID wave and when hospitals could potentially catch a break, Fehrenbach said: “We expect hospital occupancy and capacity be very strained over the next several weeks to month.
“Going into fall, we have a lot of uncertainty.”
State Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah noted there still has not been any word on federal aid to boost the state’s health care workforce.
“This is not for a lack of the federal government not wanting to support. It’s the fact that this same issue that we’re having on personnel constraints is happening across the country,” Shah said. “We are unfortunately competing with similar requests ... across the country.”
State health officials on the call reiterated that vaccines are the most effective way to prevent severe illness and hospitalization and noted that vaccinations had increased 25 percent since mid-August in the state, with the number of eligible unvaccinated individuals statewide now at about 1.5 million people.
“Unvaccinated 12 to 34 year olds in Washington are 26 more times likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, compared to similar aged people who are fully vaccinated,” Fehrenbach said.
Fully vaccinated still is defined as having received the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson, and does not include a booster shot of Pfizer.
The boosters, approved for broader categories of people late last week, are in good shape from a supply standpoint, Shah said.
“To be able to get people who are in higher risk categories, however that’s defined, to get vaccinated with their booster dose from an equity standpoint — we believe we have plenty of vaccine in the state of Washington,” Shah said.
As part of the briefing, Dr. Dan Getz, chief medical officer at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and Holy Family Hospital in Spokane, spoke once again to a statewide audience about life at his hospital facing COVID overload, not only from Washington but Idaho. He also provided an update at the Washington State Hospital Association briefing Sept. 20.
“We’re not talking about just taking care of people with COVID-19,” he said. “If your child’s in a bike accident and they have a bleed in the brain, if you’re in a car accident, you need our trauma center,” he said. “If we’re saturated, we can’t provide the care because we don’t have enough staff; we don’t have enough physical space; we don’t have the supplies; then we can’t accept patients into our facility.”
“And the only way that we can prevent that happening is to get vaccinated and wear our masks and do everything that we can until we have vaccination up to a point where this is no longer a public health threat,” he added.
His closing message this time was to the unvaccinated.
“I understand that hesitancy does not equal anti-vax, so we want to help and provide opportunities for people that have questions, a forum where they can address those questions,” Getz said. “Please come to us with those questions. We can help answer those questions for you and help you make as educated a decision as possible. Because we’re seeing daily people get very, very sick and sometimes dying from a disease that is preventable.”
Deaths have been on the rise with the Delta wave, and the specific amount of that toll might not be known for weeks.
“Unfortunately we are seeing increases in COVID-19 deaths during this fifth wave,” Fehrenbach said. “Our death data take longer to come in and be considered complete. As of late August, our seven-day rolling average for deaths was 35. And that compares to a peak of 41 in December.”
She added, “Trends in deaths typically lag behind cases and hospitalizations, and we’ll be monitoring these data closely in the weeks to come.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 2:09 PM.
