Raleigh, North Carolina – Hospitals in the area continue to struggle with the growing number of COVID-19 patients who go to the emergency room and occupy the beds in the intensive care unit.
On Monday, more than 3,500 people across the state received treatment for COVID-19 in North Carolina hospitals, according to state officials. This figure has increased by 10 percent compared to a week ago and more than three times that of a month ago.
“We just have so many patients with COVID that they are really saturating the whole system,” said Dr. David Kirk, chief associate physician at WakeMed.
WakeMed has nearly 200 COVID-19 patients, Kirk said, and between 85 and 90 percent have not been vaccinated against coronavirus.
The system has resorted to placing a dozen patient beds in the lobby of its main Raleigh hospital as a makeshift emergency.
“We can create more space. We have a lot of supplies. What we don’t have, because of the shortage of staff across the country, is more people,” Kirk said. “Not enough people can be reached, so the people who are there have to work longer and have to work harder.
“Our staff is exhausted. They are frustrated. They are tired,” he added.
The situation is similar at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, where President Brian Floyd said 172 patients have COVID-19, 45 are in critical care and 21 have life support. Ninety percent of those patients are not vaccinated, he said.
“Now we’re back to the levels we saw before we had a vaccine,” said Floyd, who noted that he spoke on behalf of the hospital’s thousands of “dedicated and emotionally exhausted team members”.
“We are seeing more deaths and suffering in our ICUs than ever before,” said Dr. Ogugua Obi, who heads Vidant’s medical ICU.
Dr. Matthew LeDoux, director of pediatrics at Vidant Health’s Maynard Children’s Hospital, said he worked a shift last week in which three teenagers, all unvaccinated, were admitted to the ICU. A newborn infected by a family member was also in the hospital, he said.
“We have been incredibly fortunate and grateful not to lose a child yet against COVID-19, but if the current trajectory continues, we will lose a child,” LeDoux said.
UNC Health Southeastern in Lumberton has recorded so many deaths from COVID-19 recently that hospital administrators rented a mobile morgue over the weekend because the usual hospital morgue is full.
“We saw the death toll rise last week to a level we knew would surpass anything we had experienced in the past,” said Joann Anderson, president and medical director of the hospital. “We didn’t want to get to the point where we didn’t have room for a body in case a patient died and we had to hold them for a while before a funeral home could come and pick them up.”
Anderson said the hospital morgue would have one or two bodies on a normal day, but he had 11 on Monday, a timid capacity. He said all of these deaths were related to the coronavirus.
Robeson County has the lowest vaccination rate in North Carolina, at just 29%. Across the state, 60 percent of adults over the age of 18 are completely vaccinated.
“Having such a low vaccination rate makes us an extremely vulnerable population, and that’s what we’re seeing ready right now with the numbers we’re seeing,” Anderson said, noting that he saw cars lined up for virus testing. when he went to work on Monday.
“I worry that I have so many people who need to be tested [and] I don’t have a line to vaccinate people, ”he said.
Doctors at the three hospitals urged people who have not been vaccinated to receive the shots as soon as possible.
“A person who gets vaccinated will personally save lives,” Kirk said. “They will save lives by preventing other people from becoming infected, but they will also prevent people and health workers from becoming infected and prevent school children from becoming infected.”
“Please consider vaccination as an option,” Anderson said.
“Please, please, please take the vaccine. Don’t turn it into a statistic,” Obi said. “This can be avoided. This is unnecessary.”