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A healthcare professional dresses in PPE (personal protective equipment) to enter the room of a Covid-19 patient in the intensive care unit at Van Wert County Hospital in Van Wert, Ohio on 20 November 2020.
Megan Jelinger | AFP | Getty Images
COLUMBUS – The Ohio Department of Health warned on Wednesday that many hospitals in Ohio are “at, or reaching, capacity” as the latest wave of coronavirus hits the Midwest state.
The surge in hospitalizations for Covid “is causing major problems in our state. The overwhelming majority of people hospitalized are not vaccinated,” the health department said on Twitter.
Wednesday’s warning comes a day after Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine reported an “astonishing” increase in state hospitalizations among young people amid rise in infections caused by the delta variant .
“Throughout this pandemic, even in the worst of times, we weren’t seeing so many young people under the age of 50 entering our hospitals,” DeWine, 74, said at a press conference on Tuesday. “The clear difference between these young Ohioans and older Ohioans is the vaccination rate.”
The governor said only 35% of state residents aged 39 and under are vaccinated, while 73% of “most vulnerable” people aged 40 and over are vaccinated. Ohio’s vaccination rate is lower than that of the United States overall, with about 58% of Ohioans aged 12 and over fully immunized, according to the State Department of Health. Nationally, that figure is 64%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hospitalizations for Covid have tended to increase in Ohio in recent weeks. The seven-day average of confirmed or suspected Covid patients in hospitals in Ohio is 4,017, almost double from a month ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the Department of Health and Social Services. It’s lower than Ohio’s peak in mid-December, when the weekly average was 5,652, according to CNBC analysis.
In Ohio, about 79% of hospital beds were in use on Tuesday, although the majority are non-Covid patients, according to the Ohio Department of Health. About 80% of the beds in Ohio’s intensive care units are currently in use. Covid patients occupy about 22% of all intensive care beds, according to the state health department.
That’s high compared to the national average of Covid patients in intensive care rooms, which sits at less than 13%, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
About 97% of all current Covid-related hospitalizations in Ohio are unvaccinated people, DeWine said. “We know what the problem is. The problem is the delta variant. It’s dangerous. It’s the engine of our push, and the solution is not very complicated.… Our solution is to get more people vaccinated.” , DeWine said.
Lack of staff is an issue complicating latest peak in hospitalizations for Covid, says Dr Michael Canady, CEO of Holzer Health System, based in southeast Ohio near the West Virginia border .
“I’m concerned that if someone comes in with a medical issue or a surgical issue that we would normally be able to deal with, we might not have the option of doing it just from the staff and the beds,” Canady said in a video tweeted by the Ohio Department of Health.
“Now we have physical beds, but right now we have a shortage of nurses who have burned out, gone, gone to nursing agencies, travel agencies that pay up to $ 10,000 a week for keep our nurses away, ”Canady said. “It is very difficult. I have worked in the healthcare industry for over 40 years and have never felt so helpless.”
– CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this report.
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