Some positive signs in COVID battle, but WA hospital officials note the holidays loom
COVID-19 hospitalizations have trended downward in Washington statewide recently, and the number of hospital workers who chose to quit in light of the vaccine mandate did not go as high as feared.
That’s according to the Washington State Hospital Association, which on Monday offered an updated snapshot of how hospitals are faring statewide with COVID patients and staffing challenges.
As of Monday, the state had 865 COVID hospitalizations, compared with 968 last week, “also a pretty significant change from what the average was a month ago, which was 1,087 ... over the last month,” Cassie Sauer, CEO of the Washington State Hospital Association, said during the update.
She noted that 120 patients are on ventilators, a decline of 29 percent in the last week.
“I want to remind folks that that decline is both from people getting better and leaving and also from people dying,” Sauer said. “We continue to have 10 to 15 people die in the hospital across the state every day from COVID.”
While overall the picture is improving, at least one hospital representative on the call said their situation was still grim with an elevated number of COVID patients.
“Mason County is still seeing a very high rate of COVID-19,” said Nicole Eddins, senior director of ancillary services with Mason Health-Mason General Hospital in Shelton. “We are sitting still a little over 500 per 100,000, which has caused about double of our occupancy rate right now.”
As for staff, “They’re working on their days off. They’re working 16-to 18-hour shifts. And in the words of one of our ICU nurses she shared with me on Friday, they’re seeing sicker patients in the last three months than she’s seen in the last 10 years.”
VACCINES AND STAFF
WSHA has been tracking the level of vaccines among hospital workers as a result of the Oct. 18 deadline in the state for health care workers to be fully vaccinated.
According to its survey, about 94 percent of hospital staff statewide are fully vaccinated.
“We lost about 2 percent of staff and the remaining staff have sought and received an exemption and have been accommodated or are in process of getting vaccinated right now,” Sauer said.
She said the results translate roughly into 2,000-3,000 workers lost over the mandate. WSHA’s initial survey in October estimated the potential number of lost workers could go as high as 7,500.
The association is continuing to survey hospitals, so a total count of workers lost for now still is unknown, she added.
To accommodate workers with exemptions, a variety of strategies have been used, but direct care of patients is a big concern, according to the hospital representatives on Monday’s call.
“We had so many heavily immunocompromised patients, many of whom can’t even have flowers in their rooms because the flowers can pose an infectious risk, that it’s hard to imagine having an unvaccinated staff member directly care for these folks,” said Dr. Seth Cohen, medical director of infection prevention at University of Washington Medical Center.
WHAT’S AHEAD
As the officials on Monday encouraged those eligible to get their COVID boosters and for children over age 5 to get vaccinated, the concern now turns to holiday gatherings.
Cohen of UW offered tips for families and cautioned that gatherings should remain small given the precarious state of COVID’s current fifth wave.
“I really think the important conversations that we should be having are how can we live with this safely?” he said. “I do think the one lingering limitation is trying to keep gatherings on the smaller side,” he said.
He offered his own example for the holidays.
“So at our house ... all attendees are going to be vaccinated, but there will still be a few people present with an underlying medical condition or folks that we may not see regularly,” Cohen said. “And so because of this we’re taking some extra protections asking people to actually quarantine as best they can for a week leading up to this.
“And then we’ll double-check that no one has symptoms or has a known high risk exposure before coming into the house.”
Sauer advised people to invest in better masks and move away from cloth masks as part of enhanced protection, warning that while Washington is trending down now with COVID, it can always zoom up with unchecked spread fueled by gatherings.
“Our colleagues in the Northeast and the Midwest are seeing a pretty significant growth in COVID cases,” she said. “I’ve heard from my counterparts in Missouri, Connecticut, New Jersey over the last week, especially over the weekend feeling like, oh my goodness, this is getting bad again.
“We don’t want to be in that position.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 12:15 PM.
