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Susan Walker has called hospitals out of state to try and get help for her husband, who has not been vaccinated against Covid-19 and is now in a induced coma.
“We searched every hospital from South Florida to North Florida” trying to find availability, Walker said.
“Transferring him to a hospital in Florida is almost impossible.”
But the situation is particularly worrying in several southern states.
And at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, “We don’t have beds. The emergency department is full of patients just waiting to get into the hospital,” Chief Medical Officer Dr Joseph Varon said. Sunday morning.
“In the past 12 hours we’ve lost more patients than… in the past five to six weeks.”
As of Sunday, Mississippi had fully vaccinated 35.2% of its residents. That makes Alabama – with 34.8% of its residents fully vaccinated – the only state in the United States to have fully vaccinated less than 35% of its residents.
The seven-day average of the doses given each day is now 706,323 doses, according to CDC data, and an average of 449,000 people begin immunizations each day.
More hospitalizations and deaths expected
The United States now averages more than 100,000 new cases of Covid-19 every day – the highest in nearly six months, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Because some cases of Covid-19 can take days or weeks to result in hospitalization or death, doctors are bracing for an ugly rehearsal of scenes from 2020.
“It’s bad. For me it’s a déjà vu of what we had last year,” said Varon.
“And the worst part about it was that it was predictable. And it was preventable. So not only are (we) exhausted, we’re bored. And we’re bored because people don’t do what we do. it’s necessary.”
And Americans who have had Covid-19 in the past shouldn’t assume they don’t need an injection.
For adults previously infected with Covid-19, vaccines offer better protection against reinfection than natural immunity alone, according to a CDC study released on Friday.
The study suggests that people who contracted Covid-19 in 2020 and who were not vaccinated were more than twice as likely to be re-infected in May or June 2021, compared to people who also had Covid-19 but who were then fully vaccinated.
“If you have had Covid-19 in the past, please still get the vaccine,” Walensky said on Friday.
There is no minimum time to wait between recovery from Covid-19 and vaccination, the CDC said.
“Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others,” Walensky said, “especially as the most contagious Delta variant is spreading across the country.”
Children’s hospitals are overwhelmed
Now some hospitals are seeing Covid-19 patients younger than before.
“Something very scary is happening in the southern United States right now. We are seeing this massive increase in youth hospitalizations that we have never seen before in southern hospitals, ”said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
“It’s a lot, a lot of young people, including, I’m sorry to say, a lot of children’s hospitalizations. And for the first time that I can remember, we are starting to see the pediatric intensive care units being overwhelmed, what we’ve never really seen before. ”
This is a 45.7% increase from the previous week in new daily hospitalizations for Covid-19 patients aged 0 to 17.
In the Miami area, “our children’s hospitals are completely overwhelmed,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, infectious disease expert at Florida International University.
“Our pediatricians, nurses, staff are exhausted. And the children are suffering,” Marty said.
“It’s absolutely devastating… We’ve never seen numbers like this before.”
None of the region’s major pediatric hospitals had beds available, said Amanda Callaway, spokesperson for Harris Health System.
The baby’s condition has since stabilized and she is no longer intubated.
Who might need booster doses first
Even though there is no coronavirus in any of the vaccines used in the United States, revolutionary infections are expected, as with other vaccines.
The tiny fraction of breakthrough infections that lead to hospitalization can include immunocompromised people or the elderly.
These two groups could be among the first to receive an extra dose of the vaccine, said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“We will almost certainly strengthen these people before we strengthen the general population that has been vaccinated,” Fauci said on Sunday. “And we should do it pretty quickly, I think.”
He said the next group that might need boosters sooner than the general population was those over 60. Fauci said the CDC is studying different age groups to see how long vaccines can stay effective.
“As soon as they see that level of durability of protection decreases, then you will see the recommendation to vaccinate these people,” he said.
Long-term Covid victim: “I didn’t think I fit the profile”
Quentin Bowen said he made an appointment to get the vaccine but had to cancel due to work.
The 41-year-old Nebraska farmer said he assumed delaying his vaccination was not a big deal.
“I didn’t think I fit the profile of who Covid (could) attack,” Bowen said on Saturday. “I was healthy. I was younger. And I was going to get (the vaccine). And I thought I had been exposed to it before and never had it, so I thought I had time. “
But Bowen fell ill with Covid-19 in May. He remembers going to the hospital and asking his friend to tell his children that he loves them.
“I knew I wouldn’t be coming home that day. And I didn’t know if I would ever come home,” Bowen said.
He survived a pulmonary embolism but is still suffering from complications three months later.
Bowen urged Americans to get vaccinated as soon as they can, while they still have the power to help preserve their health.
“Once you walk through the hospital door,” he said, “it’s all out of your hands.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the capacity of Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. The hospital, a 309-bed pediatric hospital, recorded a total of 214 admissions on Saturday. Of these, 18 were positive for Covid-19 and five were in intensive care units.
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Jessica Firger and Matthew Hilk contributed to this report.
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