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TIM VANDENACK, standard examiner
David Sagae, a phlebotomist from Intermountain Healthcare, prepares to administer a COVID-19 test at a clinic on September 10, 2020, outside the Weber County Library System facility in Ogden.
As of Friday morning, the capacity of intensive care units at Intermountain Healthcare hospitals was still significantly affected by COIVD-19 and the high volumes of patients requiring acute and critical care, the company reported.
At a new conference on Friday, Dr Eddie Stenehjem, infectious disease physician at Intermountain Healthcare, said state hospitals, especially the state’s 16 referral hospitals best equipped to treat COVID-19 patients, were at 99% of their capacity, with 45% of patients treated with the virus. The vast majority of these patients are not vaccinated, he said.
“We’ve been here for several weeks and haven’t really seen a drop in capacity issues, which are basically staying at 100%,” Stenehjem said. “What drives it is COVID. I anticipate that we will likely continue to see this level of occupancy for at least two to four weeks.
Stenehjem said that due to the high volume of patients, hospitals must always stop elective surgeries. And while the hospital will find room for urgent conditions such as strokes or heart attacks, Stenehjem said it takes a lot of juggling and travel to make this possible.
“If patients need life-saving care, they absolutely have to come to the hospital. We have to take care of them and we will find space and we will give you that care, ”he said. “There is great pressure to move people from the intensive care unit to the medical floor, but we have to make sure it is safe to move them. “
Stenehjem said moving ICU patients to other floors of the hospital can be difficult as some staff are not used to caring for these critically ill patients and are asked to take care of more than patients than usual. So instead of taking care of 12 patients, they take care of up to 18 patients.
“If we don’t have an intensive care bed or bed, we may have to ship them to another hospital. We must also deny transfer requests for out-of-state patients, ”he said. “Generally, Intermountain accepts those with open arms, but we just cannot accept these patients. “
Stenehjem said Utah has a very quick start to the Delta variant, and while other states across the country are starting to see a decline in these cases, Utah remains at a plateau.
“We are trying to assess the epidemiology but our market now has a lot of home test kits – and that’s a good thing, but these tests are not working so we have no eye on these positive tests. ,” he said. “At this point, you turn to stable metrics that include hospitalizations, emergency care visits, and (emergency room) visits. Emergency room visits have decreased a bit and this is a very good sign. We would like hospitalizations to follow.
As winter approaches, Stenehjem said it would be difficult to predict if another wave will occur, but because more than 50% of Utahns are fully vaccinated and others have natural immunity to the virus. , he hopes things will be a little calmer than last year.
“I don’t think we were planning any really big pushes but that being said I also said it last summer and look what happened,” he said. “But he will be with us all winter. He will be with us until next year. We hope it will be lower.
Stenehjem said other respiratory viruses are also expected to appear this winter, including the flu. Making the correct diagnosis, he said, is extremely important.
“If anyone has the flu, we have to treat them with Tami flu. If they have COVID, they need monoclonal antibodies, ”he said. “We’re also seeing a weird spike in (respiratory syncytial virus) in children right now and we don’t know what that will look like through the winter.”
Stenehjem said two recent studies have shown the COVID vaccine to be safe and effective.
“We are part of a national group that is studying the effectiveness of the vaccine over time and were able to access electronic data on seven networks of 187 hospitals, and the study showed that the vaccine was incredibly effective in preventing serious illnesses across ages, ethnicities and medical conditions, ”he said. “So we have a very good grasp of safety and are very confident that they are very safe and effective. So for people who were hesitant to get it because they wanted to know more, now we have more information. Our knowledge of these vaccines is very different from what it was six months ago. “
Bulletin
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