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Drs. Steven Nemerson of Saint Alphonsus, Jim Souza of St. Luke’s and David Peterman of Primary Health Medical Group (clockwise from left) held a joint media appeal last week to urge the public to get vaccinated against COVID-19. They are seeing the first signs of a new wave, and the fast-spreading delta variant can shred unvaccinated communities, they said. | Idaho capital sun
BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) – They survived 15 months of COVID-19 swabs, breathless patients, intubations and body bags. They survived the abyss of grief that is a patient’s family saying goodbye on Skype – and being the one holding that patient’s hand as they die.
The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in Idaho has given these healthcare workers hope. They lined up for gunfire in December and cried tears of relief.
Now the hospital beds are filling up again. The number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Idaho doubled this month. And they are sicker; the number of intensive care patients with COVID-19 has almost tripled.
It’s July 2021 and healthcare workers are exhausted. But now they are also frustrated.
“I’m so bored. I’m… uh… it’s hard not to be angry, you know? said Dr Meghan McInerney, medical director of intensive care at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise. “Our job is to take care of whoever walks through the door. We are proud of this as doctors and healthcare workers… no matter what bad decision they may have made in life.
The cost of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine
“There is this wave of disinformation that so many people in Idaho have completely embraced.”
ICU patients are now “relatively young,” McInerney said. Their lungs are so inflamed and full of fluid that they stop working.
“Yesterday I saw a 37-year-old patient die of COVID,” she said. A few weeks ago, they sent a patient in his 50s for a lung transplant because COVID-19 damaged their lungs beyond repair.
ICU patients all have one thing in common, she said: “Not every one of them is vaccinated.”
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This is also true in St. Luke’s hospitals, according to Dr. Jim Souza, Chief Medical Officer of St. Luke’s Health System.
“With this variant so much more infectious now, your probability of being able to dodge that sucker is getting smaller and smaller,” he said. “It will find the pockets of unvaccinated people and unimmunized people. “
Most of Idaho is a pocket, waiting to be found.
Dr. Meghan McInerney was appointed Medical Director of Critical Care at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center last September. She has helped lead the team through an unprecedented increase in serious illnesses caused by COVID-19. | Courtesy of the Saint Alphonse Health System
This week, a 35-year-old patient expressed to McInerney “just a lot of regrets and wished he could send the message to everyone to get the vaccine.” But a 31-year-old patient also in intensive care with COVID-19 told him “he still doesn’t think the vaccine is safe and that it works.”
She couldn’t believe someone so sick with a preventable disease was still in denial, she said.
“There is this wave of disinformation that so many people in Idaho have completely embraced,” she said.
Hospitals on alert as Delta spreads, intensive care already full
Saint-Alphonse and Saint-Luc hospitals have been overflowing with patients, and have been for weeks. It’s not just COVID-19. It’s a tower of health issues: car crashes, summer recreational injuries, heart attacks, strokes, surgeries.
Saint-Alphonse had a total of 379 patients admitted to its hospitals on Monday. About 10% of them had COVID-19.
St. Luke’s hospitals had a total of 545 patients admitted as of Monday. About 7% of them had COVID-19.
Idaho had a total of 136 people hospitalized with COVID-19 on Friday, the most recent day with nearly complete reports from Idaho hospitals. Of those, 43 patients were in intensive care, according to data from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
The number of COVID-19 patients remains below that of the outbreaks in summer and fall 2020. But the counts are growing higher, which is why Souza is worried.
“Our ICU count today, right now, is as high as it was at the peak (COVID-19) in December,” Souza said in an interview last week.
“What changes between now and December?” In December, the story was COVID. COVID was literally 50% of our acute care admissions… and we were pushed to close to our capacity, and we were all worried and scared (we were heading towards rationing care).
This summer, the COVID-19 patient load has been “super stable,” at only about 5% of patients, he said.
“Two weeks ago that all started to change, and in the last two weeks that has doubled. It’s now 10% of our inpatient admissions, ”he said. “I mean, adding that, it’s not just like the last straw that could break the camel’s back. It’s like a straw that will become a haystack, if it does something like the last three pushes.
The other thing that has changed since December is that vaccines are available at pharmacies, mobile clinics, emergency care offices and community events. Idaho is inundated with doses. But the hundreds of thousands of Idahoans who can get them still haven’t.
McInerney begins to feel unsafe again when she goes to the grocery store. She has no company at home unless she knows they are vaccinated. She wears her mask again. She has two young children at home and she doesn’t want them catching the fast-spreading Delta variant.
“I’m counting the days until they can be vaccinated,” she said.
She is also worried about her intensive care team.
Saint Alphonsus will always be ready to treat patients, she said. But healthcare workers are not an infinite and consumable resource.
“We’re so tight, having gone through a pandemic together,” she said. “We’re all so close, and we’re in the same boat. And we’re at the point where we’re at with frustration. “
She fears morale will suffer if the team has to endure a new wave of COVID-19, at a time when vaccines are readily available.
Healthcare in Idaho has already lost some of its workforce due to burnout and trauma. Some nurses fell in love with their careers after months of grueling work in hot PPE, trying to save people who didn’t trust medical experts.
“I don’t know if our health care system can tolerate another exodus of health care workers,” McInerney said.
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