Covid and Hospitals: How are things now?

[CrunchRN]

Just curious. Here in DFW I see hospitalizations are rising to 14%. How are things in the hospitals? Are things relatively normal? No more furloughs?

Please share. I am not in acute care, but I am of course very interested in the effects on acute care staff.

[Wuzzie]

Sadly once this got politicized that ship sailed. 

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Those with religious or political hesitancy were never reachable unless the incentive is something they really want enough (ability to travel etc.)

I have lots of friends that fully support ex pres Trump (not me!), but they are all reasonable people and got the vaccine as soon as available. I have relatives that are uber christian "righties" and really good people and there is no moving them from their anti vaccine stance.

There was a picture in the paper this am taken at the Nascar event this weekend. Full stands of people shoulder to shoulder and without masks. I guess we shall see how it works out.

 

[toomuchbaloney]

13 hours ago, CrunchRN said:

Those with religious or political hesitancy were never reachable unless the incentive is something they really want enough (ability to travel etc.)

I have lots of friends that fully support ex pres Trump (not me!), but they are all reasonable people and got the vaccine as soon as available. I have relatives that are uber christian "righties" and really good people and there is no moving them from their anti vaccine stance.

There was a picture in the paper this am taken at the Nascar event this weekend. Full stands of people shoulder to shoulder and without masks. I guess we shall see how it works out.

 

What we will see is that the Delta variant will surge to the forefront among those people because it is more contagious and more deadly to younger people.  In Brazil that variant affects those who previously had infection and were seropositive. When groups of people make decisions based upon emotions and feelings rather than facts and evidence during infectious outbreaks, they endanger everyone. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01347-0

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Seems are stable here at a 3% positivity rate and or no deaths daily it seems. This is DFW area.

I wonder - are hospitals seeing younger & sicker patients now? Are they recovering?

[gere7404, BSN, RN]

1 hour ago, CrunchRN said:

Seems are stable here at a 3% positivity rate and or no deaths daily it seems. This is DFW area.

I wonder - are hospitals seeing younger & sicker patients now? Are they recovering?

I had a five year old covid pt the last day I worked. She was fine except she was dehydrated. gave her a baby Bolus, a popsicle and some kids apap and went her home.
that’s the first peds pt I’ve seen need any tx d/t covid. 

had an older dude come in that was pretty sick, classic “bad” covid. Pneumonia’s, *** spo2, declined pretty quick from when we triaged him to when we got him admitted. Usually though, the majority of the time, we give fluids, and send them home with a consult to get remdesivir through out pt infusion services.
 

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Thank you for that update gere7404. Appreciate it.

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

I see our positivity rate has doubled in the last month from 3 to 6 percent. I sure hope those that are getting it are not a sick as previously seen.

[JVBT, ASN]

Cases are definitely on the increase now, even if slight.

[Wuzzie]

Ups and downs are going to be normal. Personally I think at this point they should stop reporting case numbers and instead report hospitalizations. In addition in many states we are back to the point where trace and track would work to shut down outbreaks (especially of the variants) but I’m afraid that won’t be happening. There is no way people will subject themselves to mask mandates and shutdowns again. There would most certainly be a mutiny. As it stands now in my large university health system we have only 7 COVID positive patients. 4 on vents. 

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Thank you for that update.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Missouri has low COVID vaccination rates.   Mercy Springfield  had 47 Vents in use on patients requiring hospital to open  2nd COVID ICU, bring in more vents Tuesday.  Rapid rise in COVID -19 was predictable due to vaccine resistance in area.

Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, runs out of  ventilators as COVID cases ravage the area

Quote

Chief administrative officer, Erik Frederick, tweeted Sunday that the hospital “spent the night looking for ventilators because we ran out.”

He wrote that the hospital had 47 patients on ventilators, “a lot of those are COVID but not all.”

 

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Washington Post  7/6/2021

Appalachian highlands Covid deniers

Their neighbors called covid-19 a hoax. Can these ICU nurses forgive them?

For the nurses in the Appalachian highlands who risked their lives during the pandemic, it is as if they fought in a war no one acknowledges.
 

Quote

...The pandemic had hit late but hard in the Appalachian highlands — the mountainous region that includes Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee — and over the Winter many of its victims had ended up on ventilators tended by Boucher and her fellow nurses at Johnston Memorial Hospital.

They were enduring the traumas known to ICU workers across the world: days filled with death, nights ruined by dreams in which they found themselves at infected patients’ bedsides without masks. But they were also enduring a trauma that many doctors and nurses elsewhere were not: the suspicion and derision of those they risked their lives to protect.

Conspiracy theories about the pandemic and lies recited on social media — or at White House news conferences — had penetrated deep into their community. When refrigerated trailers were brought in to relieve local hospitals’ overflowing morgues, people said they were stage props. Agitated and unmasked relatives stood outside the ICU insisting that their intubated relatives only had the flu. Many believed the doctors and nurses hailed elsewhere for their sacrifices were conspiring to make money by falsifying covid-19 diagnoses....

...“You’re living this reality that people don’t understand, and there’s nothing you can say that will convince them,” Boucher, 40, would later explain. “They just say you’re lying.”

The post-traumatic stress experienced by nurses and doctors during the pandemic has been compared to what soldiers suffer. But in places still rife with covid denial — often rural, conservative and devoted to former president Donald Trump — there is a difference: It is like having fought in a war that many believe never took place....

..Jamie Swift, a registered nurse who oversees infection prevention for Johnston and Ballad’s other hospitals, recalled her realization that “people would trust facebook more than they would trust us” — and her horror at the consequences as the Winter surge began...