Delta surge might be slowing, but WA hospitals still struggling. ‘They are overfilled’
As much as the state and its residents are moving on from the pandemic with the return of school, the state fair and sporting events, state health officials Wednesday warned of dangerous levels of COVID-19 caseloads still confronting hospitals, mostly involving the unvaccinated.
Dr. Scott Lindquist, the state’s acting health officer, told reporters at the Department of Health’s news briefing that the Delta variant is still driving more than 99 percent of cases statewide, leading to the current wave of case numbers.
“The current wave is higher than it’s been since the beginning,” Lindquist said. “Now, the good news is we’re starting to see some stalling out of this. Not sure if this is going to go in the downward direction ... but it is the first good piece of information that we’ve had that we’re starting to see some downward trend, but I’d be very cautious about this until we see this further.”
Lindquist noted, “If you’re between the ages of 12 to 34 .... you’re 30 times more likely to be hospitalized if you’re unvaccinated.”
The state DOH on Wednesday issued its report on unvaccinated cases, its most recent update since late August. The report also noted that unvaccinated 35-64 year olds are 21 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19.
Dr. Steve Mitchell is medical director of the Washington Medical Coordination Center and the emergency department at Harborview Medical Center. Mitchell told reporters the toll amid the unvaccinated was continuing to be felt.
“The front lines for this battle with this common enemy is our hospitals, And they are overfilled,” he said. “All of our resource hospitals, all of them are over capacity.”
“It means that our resource hospitals in places like the Tri-Cities and Wenatchee and Everett and Vancouver, as well as Seattle, all of them are going to incredible lengths to care for their patients. They are doing things like turning areas not meant to be taken care of critical care patients into ICU. They are also taking staff who normally don’t work in intensive care units and they are extending the staff that are in normally working critical care units.”
Mitchell said that as of Wednesday, there were 1,592 COVID patients in hospitals statewide.
“For context, that’s roughly the equivalent of four Harborview Medical Centers where I practice medicine, spread out throughout the entire state,” he said.
The current total is down from figures shared Monday by the Washington State Hospital Association, which tallied 1,673.
Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah cautioned the decline doesn’t mean hospitals are instantly in better shape, as it will take time for the wave as a whole to recede and the effects of the newly vaccinated to take hold — up to six to eight weeks with the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
“Though we’re maybe starting to see the flattening as Dr. Mitchell mentioned, one of the concerns is that we’re at a significantly severely high number,” Shah said. “It’s the equivalent of driving on a freeway, when you’re driving on a freeway, and you have the accelerator pressed, and all of a sudden, you let go of the accelerator, it does not mean that your car immediately stops.
“We’re going to continue to see whatever inputs, whatever patients that are coming. We’ll continue to stress that system for some time.”
Mitchell said that since July 1, the Washington Medical Coordination Center “has dealt with over 1,000 requests from hospitals who have been unable to place their patients ... to move their patients from these small, rural critical access hospitals, where they can stabilize patients, to the locations that can actually intervene and fix those patients.”
Statewide, 75.1 percent of those 12 and older has received at least one dose of vaccine and 68.1 percent are fully vaccinated.
“It’s time, though for the 1.6 million others who haven’t been vaccinated yet to head to the vaccine locator and make an appointment to get vaccinated today,” said Michele Roberts, acting assistant secretary with the state DOH.
There is no timeline on when guidance will arrive from the federal level on vaccines for those younger than 12.
Shah made several impassioned pleas during the briefing for people to vaccinate and follow the other safety measures including masking and social distancing.
“This is not about a political stunt, this is not about a governmental overreach. This is about the fact that we have people in our system who are going to die, who are going to have severe illness, who are going to be on ventilators, if we are not doing what we can do.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2021 at 1:12 PM with the headline "Delta surge might be slowing, but WA hospitals still struggling. ‘They are overfilled’."
