Doctors paint dire picture in Upstate hospitals from COVID surge, beg people to get vaccine

Upstate hospitals are at or above capacity with COVID patients, most of them unvaccinated and much younger than in previous surges.

At the same time, the five hospital systems in the Upstate are facing serious staff shortages and burn out among those still working.

Doctors from each of the hospital systems held a joint press conference Thursday, and each said they were begging people to get vaccinated.

“This is not a benign disease,” said Dr. Christopher Lombardozzi, chief medical officer at Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System. “This is a terrible, terrible disease.”

Each of the hospital systems reported more than 95 percent of COVID patients, including those in intensive care and on ventilators, were not vaccinated.

“Things could not be worse,” Lombardozzi said.

Each doctor said the situation is more dire than it was in the winter, during the second surge, because the rate of spread is so rapid.

Dr. Wendell James, chief clinical officer at Prisma Health in the Upstate, said there were 12 patients with COVID in Prisma hospitals on July 2. On Thursday, there were 436, and 410 of them were unvaccinated. Of the 54 people on ventilators, 52 were unvaccinated.

“This has become a disease of the unvaccinated,” he said.

James said 10 children are hospitalized with COVID, and one is in critical condition.

The other hospital systems — Self in Greenwood, AnMed in Anderson and Bob Secours St. Francis in Greenville — are seeing similar numbers between vaccinated and unvaccinated patients. All of the vaccinated patients in their hospitals have an underlying disease, they said.

Several of the doctors pleaded with people to listen to them and not rely on information from the Internet.

James called the three vaccines available the “golden bullet.”

Dr. Brad Mock, chief medical officer at AnMed Health, said most of the people in the Anderson hospital are in their 40s.

Dr. Surabhi Gaur, chief medical officer at Bon Secours St. Francis Health System in Greenville, issued a personal plea in addition to a professional one, to help keep her small children, who are too young to be vaccinated, safe.

“I don’t know why this has become a political issue,” she said in response to a question from a reporter. “We have watched the world’s largest clinical trial play out.”

The vaccines are safe and “it’s the right thing to do,” she said.

Mock said the situation is made more difficult because 15 percent of health care workers have left the industry or retired since the pandemic began.

“We’re exhausted,” he said.

None of the doctors said specifically how many staff positions were vacant, but James said the state faces a shortage of 3,000 to 3,500 nurses statewide. Other hospital specialties are seeing similar resignations.

In South Carolina, more than 700,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 10,000 people have died.

Gaur said 46 percent of eligible people — those older than 12 — have been vaccinated in South Carolina.

“This is not, go to the hospital, stay a few days and go home,” Lombardozzi said. “People are very, very sick, some will never go home, some will be devastated (with chronic illness). This is under your control.”