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States like Mississippi, where hospitals have reached their breaking point, should provide North Dakotas with a warning, Burgum said.
“It could happen here because we have some of the same characteristics of limited (hospital) capacity and low vaccination rates,” Burgum said.
Executives at healthcare giants Sanford, Essentia, Altru, CHI St. Alexius and Trinity said hospitals in the state’s largest cities are already pushing their limits as staffing issues abound and COVID-related hospitalizations -19 increase.
Fueled by the highly contagious delta variant, North Dakota’s COVID-19 infections quintupled in August, and hospital officials like Sanford Bismarck CEO and chairman Dr Michael LeBeau predict the spike in cases of the state will not arrive until at least the end of September.
The virus is taking options away from healthcare and patients, said Dr Jeffrey Sather, chief of medical staff at Trinity Minot. Criticized hospitals must postpone surgeries and other scheduled procedures, while patients could have to travel hundreds of miles to seek medical care if their local providers are short of staff, space or resources, he said.
While none of the major hospitals have completely suspended elective surgeries, LeBeau and Sather said their hospitals reassess their capacity on a daily basis and frequently postpone procedures if spending resources on them is too tight. LeBeau said Sanford Fargo already has a plan in place to cut surgeries by 30% to free up capacity.
If the alarming rise in COVID-19-related hospitalizations continues, Sather said hospitals with limited staff could stretch nurses and have unskilled workers looking after patients. When hospitals cannot do their “day-to-day business,” everyone who needs medical attention suffers.
LeBeau said he believes the state’s healthcare system will adapt to meet the challenge of high admissions and impeded capacity, but it comes at a cost: frontline healthcare workers will have to take over. and those seeking medical care will suffer and sometimes die from otherwise preventable illnesses.
Burgum noted that “not only is this (increase) not the same as it was a year ago because we have better tools, but we also have more constraints. ”
The vaccine is proven to prevent many hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 – about 90% of people hospitalized with the virus in North Dakota are not fully vaccinated. Residents who are fully immune, including most older residents, will largely avoid serious illness from COVID-19 and have a better chance of staying out of hospital during the impending flare.
However, mobile nurses are not available as they were last year, as many help in the hard-hit southern United States, Burgum said. This means there is less relief for hospitals suffering from understaffing.
Unvaccinated residents have a choice, and if they choose to forgo the vaccine, they risk being hospitalized and negatively impacting loved ones and people they don’t even know who might need the bed. hospital they occupy, Burgum said.
Statewide case rate
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NEW CASES REPORTED WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 1: 463
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ACTIVE CASES *: 2,442
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DAILY POSITIVITY RATE: 5.91%
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TOTAL KNOWN CASES DURING THE PANDEMIC: 117 955
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TOTAL RECOVERED DURING THE PANDEMIC: 113,952
* The Ministry of Health often changes the number of active cases after their first notification.
Nearly 20% of active COVID-19 cases in North Dakota are in adolescents under the age of 15, according to data from the North Dakota Department of Health.
More young people are infected with COVID-19 and need hospitalization in North Dakota and across the country compared to a year ago, health officials said on Wednesday. The increase is largely due to the highly contagious delta variant, which is the cause of most cases of COVID-19 in the United States and North Dakota.
Four children under the age of 15 were hospitalized with COVID-19 in North Dakota on Wednesday, according to the state.
Almost 20% of the new positive cases reported were among young people under the age of 15, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Cass County, which includes Fargo, has the state’s best-known active cases with 474. Burleigh County had 451 known cases as of Wednesday and Ward County, which includes Minot, had 204.
The state’s 14-day moving average positivity rate was 6.54% as of Tuesday, and since June 27, there have been 184 cases of reinfection.
Hospitalizations, death
North Dakota had 16 staffed intensive care beds available statewide on Tuesday, as well as 199 staffed inpatient beds. As of Tuesday, there was one staffed intensive care bed available among the two hospitals in Bismarck, 10 staffed intensive care beds available at all three hospitals in Fargo, and two available in Grand Forks.
The health ministry began publishing data on the breakthrough cases last week. A landmark case occurs when a person tests positive for COVID-19 after being fully immunized. During the week of August 22, the state reported 12 hospitalizations where the person was fully vaccinated and 77 hospitalizations where the person was not fully vaccinated.
Vaccination
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FIRST DOSE ADMINISTERED *: 348,119 (52.6% of the population aged 12 and over)
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COMPLETE VACCINE COVERAGE *: 320,773 (48.1% of the population aged 12 and over)
* These numbers are from the state’s Vaccine Dashboard, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes vaccinations performed at federal sites, reports slightly higher vaccination rates.
North Dakota’s vaccination rate is among the lowest in the United States, ranking 42 out of 50, Burgum said Wednesday. Even though about 48% of all North Dakotas are fully vaccinated, the rate among residents aged 12-18 is only around 25%.
Even though a person can become infected with COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated, health officials point out that those who are vaccinated often have less severe symptoms and are less likely to be hospitalized.
More than 320,000 North Dakotas are fully vaccinated and 0.0405% of them have been hospitalized due to COVID-19, according to the Department of Health. The risk of infection also decreases when a person is vaccinated.
In North Dakota, one in 175 fully vaccinated people have tested positive for COVID-19, compared to one in 15 unvaccinated people, according to the Department of Health. More information on vaccines is available at www.health.nd.gov/covidvaccinelocator.
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Readers can contact reporter Michelle Griffith, a member of the Report for America Corps, at [email protected].
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