Hospital ICU beds filling with coronavirus patients
Sep. 21—COLUMBUS — Every patient who walks into the emergency room of Fulton County Health Center in Wauseon — whether suffering from coronavirus or not — will be treated, but getting a bed in the intensive-care unit is a different story because they are filled with unvaccinated patients.
There are no plans to trigger emergency plans that were put together last year to create additional capacity, such as converting convention centers into hospital wards.
"We have the capability of the physical part of that emergency plan to handle the surge last year, but it does us no good to put the physical part of that in play when you don't have the medical resources and staffing to implement and take care of those physical locations in that emergency plan," said the rural hospital's Dr. Alan Rivera during a news briefing with Gov. Mike DeWine on Tuesday.
The governor and his health director, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, again used the dire experiences of varying hospitals across the state to drive the message home that decisions by Ohioans not to get vaccinated have repercussions beyond themselves.
For instance, in the small Fulton County facility, every intubated patient is unvaccinated. There is only one vaccinated patient in its intensive-care unit and that person has not been intubated.
"I have to believe the reason he's not intubated is because he's been vaccinated," Dr. Rivera said.
Terri Alexander, a registered nurse at Summa Health in Akron, fought back tears as she described the patients she sees every day.
"They're so sick," she said. "They're sick longer, and they're younger...And now we're dealing with women who are pregnant, and they're in their 30s. It's just a sad, sad situation that we're dealing with, and everyone here is just exhausted."
Ohio on Tuesday reported a delta-era high in daily new hospitalizations on Tuesday — 459, the highest seen since the January surge when access to vaccines was not nearly as widespread. New intensive-care admissions numbered 47, more than double the three-week average.
The state reported another 125 deaths, something it now does just twice a week. There were 6,814 new infections, below the delta-era peak of over 9,000 seen on Sept. 10 but still above the three-week average of 6,572.
During the week of Sept. 5, the state recorded its highest number of hospitalizations for those under the age of 50.
"If you're young and unvaccinated, it's now probably only a question of when, not if, you get COVID-19," Dr. Vanderhoff said. "And when you get it, without the protection of a vaccine, there is a very real risk that you'll end up in a hospital or even in the obituary pages. The numbers really tell it all. COVID has changed, and is now making younger Ohioans who aren't vaccinated very sick."
Roughly 10,000 more Ohioans each day are getting vaccinated, but that slow progress means the state still lags behind the national average. To date, 53.4 percent of all Ohioans have gotten at least one shot while 62.5 percent of those age 12 and older who are eligible for vaccines have done so. That compares to 49.5 percent and 57.9 percent, respectively, who have completed the cycle.
Mr. DeWine has said he is considering offering even more incentives to convince more Ohioans to join them. A lottery dangling $1 million prizes and full-ride scholarships boosted numbers — but only for a brief period of time.
He has urged school districts to mandate the wearing of face masks for students and employees while indoors, and nearly 60 percent of public school students now live in a district that has done so. But he has said he will not issue another statewide face mask mandate, saying he expects that fellow Republicans in the General Assembly would waste little time undoing such an order.
First Published September 21, 2021, 4:26pm
