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Good news is cases are down about 1200 from last Wednesday. We're probably over the Thanksgiving hump from a case perspective, but in the midst of the the hospitalizations and deaths. Just in time for Christmas and New Years!
Data from the US Department of Health and Human Services updated this week shows that COVID-19 is having a greater impact on the Triangle's hospitals.
During the week from December 4 to December 10, Duke University Hospital had an average of 63 adult patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 in inpatient beds each day, an increase of seven patients from the previous week. That number includes 24 patients in the ICU with COVID-19 on average each day, an increase of five patients from the week before.
On average, 97% of the hospital's 750 adult inpatient beds were occupied each day. And according to the data, every one of Duke University Hospital's 115 intensive care unit beds were full on average each day. Dr. Lisa Pickett, the hospital's chief medical officer, said her team meets every day to discuss where and how patients need the most attention.
"Our beds are very full," Pickett said. "We do maintain several COVID beds open, or at least one at any given time, because COVID patient care is so specific that if someone is decompensating, we need to move them very rapidly into the safest possible location for them to receive higher level of critical care so we do tend to try to keep a moving bed space for those patients. And just about as soon as we empty the room out, another patient is waiting to come in, and that's especially true today."
In total, 39 confirmed COVID-19 patients were admitted to Duke University Hospital in the last week. While that may not seem like much, Pickett said the influx of patients adds stress to what is already a busy time of year for hospitals.
"We always understand that our ICUs are going to be particularly full in the wintertime," Pickett said. "We have some COVID patients that remain in our intensive care unit literally weeks and months. And so once you have those patients filling those beds for that long period of time, it leaves fewer beds for other people to come into."
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And she added that while she has the ability to open additional parts of the hospital and add beds, like other hospitals around the state, staffing is an issue.
"Our limitation right now is the ability to rapidly hire in this time," Pickett said. "Our team members are our best commodity and they are worth their weight in gold."
Got out of a hospital meeting with many directors and physicians who are directors also.
Important points from the meeting:
- The main executive medical director for the hospital started off the meeting by saying, "Yes, it's true - COVID sucks and we need to pull together if this will be anywhere near successful."
- We have less than 6 ICU beds remaining for any intensive diagnosis. The average running daily for the last week is 3-6 ICU beds remaining - what we do is move patients to general medical floors when available and move/switch constantly to make sure patients have ICU capability. Basically, the observation period after STOPPING the ventilator has gone down to 2 hours and if the patient does well, MOVE THEM OUT!" This never happens normally.
- ICU bed capability has been expanded to PACU, post-operative beds, and other areas of the hospital where oxygen and ventilators can be attached.
- The above is NOT the problem - we now have a staffing issue and we are contracting out of state to get more nurses and doctors.
- Our on-staff nurses are tired and do NOT want to work more hours. ICU nurses who normally take care of 2 patients, are now being asked to take care of 3 patients. General medical COVID-19 nurses are being asked to take on 2 more patients than normal. These numbers may not seem big to you, but they are very stressful.
- The main problem remains: the hospital has enough rooms to expand ICU and COVID beds, but there are no staff willing to work on these beds. People are exhausted from the continuous incoming of COVID-19 patients, staff getting sick from COVID-19, and the fear of more infections.
The City Attorney's Office was preparing a letter to send out Tuesday afternoon notifying Mitchell and Gunther of the complaints and reminding them of existing restrictions.
Ah yes, a strongly worded letter -- that surely is a deterrent to people. These people need to be fined, not reminded. They know what the restrictions are and are clearly willingly violating them without worry of recourse.
Ah yes, a strongly worded letter -- that surely is a deterrent to people. These people need to be fined, not reminded. They know what the restrictions are and are clearly willingly violating them without worry of recourse.
They're just giving this guy publicity which was probably his goal in the first place. Best would be for the media to just not report on it.
Rev James White should speak at press conferences more regularly. Hearing that man speak is so powerful..
Not only a pastor, he is also an exec for YMCA of the Triangle and at any corporate event his sessions would give the whole room goosebumps every time.
WRAL reports that "104 clusters, 1945 cases, and 32 deaths are attributed to church gatherings".
Just another reason why organized religion is bad.
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