In addition, federals apologize for sending fewer doses of the expected vaccines.
(Rick Egan | Tribune Archive Photo) Taylor Woodrow tests Covid-19 at the Intermountain Healthcare Cottonwood InstaCare on Friday, December 11, 2020.
Utah hospitals ’intensive care units have never been so resounding during the pandemic, with many of them beyond their officialdom, as the state reported another 2,408 cases of COVID-19 and eight more deaths. Saturday.
The percentage of all ICU beds occupied statewide is now 99.4%, or 534 of 537 filled beds.
In the 14 largest hospitals that handle most cases of coronavirus, the rate of occupied ICU beds is now 104.1%, or 480 patients, which exceeds its official capacity of 461 beds.
With COVID-19 in addition to regular cases, the University of Utah Health ICUs reached a point earlier this week where “we couldn’t admit anyone, and that lasted several hours” before the beds they open when some patients leave or are transferred, said Dr. Kencee Graves, assistant chief medical officer.
This happened even though the university earlier this year (as the coronavirus threat grew) turned some space into a new ICU of “overvoltage unit” with 23 beds beyond 111 points. usual ICU.
On Saturday, Graves said the university officially had 115% of normal capacity, filling the usual 111 beds plus many of the surge unit.
It faces many challenges beyond having beds, Graves said.
“You need to have the physical bed, a safe space for the bed and staff to take care of the person in bed,” he said. And so we had to do all these things. “
This includes the need to ask ICU nurses and doctors to work two to four additional shifts a month, “many of them at night,” he said.
More ICU teams have been formed by changing doctors and nurses from other places and moving residents away from some of their normal rotations. Some surgeries have been delayed, he said, because patients would need a ICU bed.
Utah hospitals also work together, Graves said, so if one ICU is full, patients can be sent to another that has space. Graves said that because the University Hospital also cares for people from all over Intermountain West, it also carefully examines transfers to make sure they need the extra care available here and that can be provided.
“We still have a lot of very sick patients there. So we have a lot of deaths, ”said Graves. But he said a good sign is that the rate of positive test results has started to decline recently. Fewer cases now mean fewer hospitalizations and more people in the ICU afterwards.
Dr Eddie Stenehjem, an infectious disease doctor at Intermountain Healthcare, also told reporters at a video conference on Friday that once COVID-19 patients enter the ICU, “it’s not usually a short hospital stay.”
He said: “Many times the average stay ranges from 10 to 11 days. So patients take a while to be well enough where they can get out of the ICU or, unfortunately, to die. “
The state reported Saturday that 559 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. The total number of hospitalizations since the beginning of the outbreak is already 9,968.
The head of Operation Warp Speed, General Gustave F. Perna, said some of the problems stemmed from the federal government’s miscalculation of how many doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine could be sent.
“It was my fault,” he said. “It was a planning error and I’m responsible.”
Utah will receive 16,575 doses next week “instead of the 23,400 we had planned,” health officials posted on Twitter on Friday: a 30% reduction.
The health department reported Saturday that 3,648 people have received the vaccine in Utah, but said that number could be delayed by a few days.
In a statement Friday, Intermountain Healthcare, which has administered the vaccine at several of its hospitals to front-line health workers, said it was “grateful for what we received and excited to have started vaccinating our caregivers. We will adjust as we have the whole pandemic and we will administer the vaccine as we receive it ”.
Similarly, University of Utah Health officials said “they were currently busy vaccinating our equipment with the supply we now have at home. We will adjust our launch plan as needed.”
Both Intermountain and the University of Utah Health urged Utahns to continue wearing face masks, practicing social distancing, washing their hands, and staying home if they are ill.
The rate in Utah over the past seven days has been 80 infections per 100,000 residents, significantly higher than the national average of 67 per 100,000.
The eight deaths reported on Saturday included:
• Five Salt Lake County residents: two men, one 46 to 64 years old and the other 65 to 84 years old; three women, one 46-64 and two 65-84
• A man from Box Elder County, aged 65 to 84.
• A man from Utah County, over 85 years old.
• A Davis County woman between the ages of 45 and 64.
The total number of deaths for Utah from the coronavirus was 1,148 on Saturday.
The continuous average of 7 days for positive tests is 2,454 per day. The 7-day average of the percentage of positive lab tests is 22.1%, which remained constant on Saturday.