Cautious optimism as COVID-19 vaccine hits hardest-hit county in North Dakota

“I’m proud of this,” said the doctor, chief of staff of Minot’s Trinity Health, holding up his vaccination record as he posed for pictures. Trinity received a small batch of 250 doses on Thursday morning, December 18, and began vaccinating priority personnel early Friday.

But for Sather, the long winter ahead is greater than the wonder of those first vials of vaccine. “I feel a sense of relief, but the relief is not today,” he said.

The arrival of the vaccine in Minot followed just after a crisis on all fronts at Trinity Health. The hospital converted a floor and a half into a COVID-19 unit. For weeks in October and November, Sather’s hospital was in disarray, often too full to accept transfers from surrounding rural hospitals. Sather and his colleagues reported that patients were crowding into cars and the waiting room. At one point, nearly 140 staff were in quarantine. And at a press conference last month, Sather categorically described having “to watch someone choke to death” daily, “sometimes several times a day.”

As in other parts of the state, cases of the virus have fallen sharply in Minot in recent weeks. But the city’s surrounding Ward County holds the unenviable place as the deadliest county in the North Dakota pandemic. At 165, Ward has reported more deaths from COVID-19 than any other county, surpassing the largest population centers of Burleigh and Cass.

“We have been hit in a devastating way because we have been hit hard in a very short period of time,” Sather explained. “We saw next to nothing during the first few months of the COVID pandemic. We only saw a few patients arriving. We went a few months earlier without a single hospitalization.”

Respiratory and critical care specialist Dr Jeffrey Verhey said while the overall burden of Trinity’s COVID wing has eased over the past few weeks, a delay in recoveries has actually created an increased burden. for the hospital’s intensive care unit in recent weeks. week and a half. Some of the more severe virus infected patients are still in pain. “On a ventilator, it takes weeks and weeks to get better and for them to come off the ventilator,” Verhey said. “This is what I call ‘COVID hell’.”

So even with the sudden reversal of fortunes that the vaccine brings, it’s hard for Sather and others in Minot to see his arrival as anything other than an important step forward. Not yet.

“We’re not over the bump,” Sather said. “Because what will happen if we don’t do what we’re doing here today with everyone is people will start to let their guard down.”

Sather, who was one of the state’s strongest advocates for mask warrants this fall, said he had seen a “palpable difference” in Minot since North Dakota adopted a mandate in the statewide in mid-November. But he also noted that he and his wife were doing little more than going between the hospital, the grocery store, and their homes and urged others not to break the form before the vaccine could be effectively distributed throughout. the state.

The doctor stressed he hopes as many North Dakotans will take the vaccine as those who have honored the mask’s mandate in recent weeks. “If we don’t have people vaccinated, we will see a resurgence of COVID-19 in 2021,” he said.

Jennifer Weichmann, Ward County’s director of emergency management, described herself as “skeptically optimistic.” For more than a month, she stood ready to request a refrigerated morgue truck, as her town’s two funeral homes neared their limit for caskets and funerals. “We’re all kind of breathlessly waiting to see what Christmas brings and the New Years, especially after people maybe a little more comfortable with complacency,” she said.

Still, the vaccine provides a comfort Weichmann had never had before. She and her boyfriend are both first responders, and her boyfriend, a firefighter, has battled a case of the virus before. “Knowing that we’re both at the bottom of the list for this vaccine definitely helps me sleep better at night,” she said.

At Somerset Court, an assisted living facility in Minot that was devastated by the virus this fall, the mood was lighter on Friday. In October, an epidemic burned down at the facility at an alarming rate, dropping the house from zero COVID-19 cases to 58 in a single day of testing. Twenty-one people died.

But Friday marked the start of a new chapter. At a folding table under a Christmas tree, staff members have signed up residents for a vaccine shipment, scheduled for later this month.

“Are you planning to get vaccinated?” LeAnna Heupel, a resident services coordinator, asked a woman. She repeated to herself, a little louder, “Are you planning to get the vaccine?”

Gudron Sjol, a 101-year-old woman who was among 58 residents who tested positive for the virus in early October, said she learned of the vaccine on television a few weeks ago. She said she intended to take it and sat down at the table to register. “I didn’t have to think about it,” she laughs.

But it’s been a few months in Somerset. The memory of the trauma is so recent that staff were waiting this afternoon for a notice from the local pharmacy as to whether a large group of residents who tested positive in the past 90 days would be eligible for the first round of vaccines. At first, many residents were skeptical about the vaccine being developed quickly. And while Somerset finally stood at zero positive cases in recent times, they reported two new positives again this morning.

There is still a lot of work to be done, said Melissa VanDeventer, director of Somerset. “It’s baby coming back to what we – you know, what word I’m looking for? The ‘new normal’.”

Readers can contact Adam Willis, Forum reporter, member of the Report for America Corps, at [email protected].