BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (AP) – With dozens of intensive care beds already full, Cullman Regional Medical Center has been desperately looking for options as more and more COVID-19 patients show up.
Ten beds normally used for less severe cases were transformed into intensive care units, with additional IV devices brought. Video monitors were installed to allow staff to monitor patients whenever a nurse had to leave to take care of someone else.
The patch has done the job – at least for now.
“We’re kind of like a tub filling with water and the leak is blocked,” the hospital’s chief physician, Dr. William Smith, said last week.
Alabama, one of the healthiest and poorest states in America, has become one of the most alarming hot spots of coronavirus.
Its hospitals are in crisis as the virus gets out of control in a region with high rates of obesity, high blood pressure and other conditions that can make COVID-19 even more dangerous, where access to healthcare was limited just before the outbreak and where public resistance to masks and other precautions is stubborn.
The virus has killed more than 335,000 people in the United States, including more than 4,700 in Alabama. Places like California and Tennessee have also been particularly hard hit in recent weeks.
At Cullman Regional, a medium-sized hospital serving an agricultural area 55 miles north of Birmingham, the intensive care unit has had a 180% capacity since last week, the largest in the state. Other hospitals are also struggling to keep up with the passion of people with the virus.
While a typical patient may need ICU treatment for two to three days, Smith said, patients with COVID-19 often stay for two to three weeks, causing the volume of cases to build up.
Alabama ranked sixth on the list of states with the latest per capita cases in the past week, according to Johns Hopkins University. Alabama’s latest average positivity rate – the percentage of tests that test positive for the virus – is nearly 40%, one of the highest figures in the country. And the state records an average of 46 deaths a day, up from 30 on December 14
While nationwide ICUs had a capacity of 78% in the week of December 18-24, Alabama was 91% full, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As of last week, 15 hospitals in Alabama had intensive care units with a capacity or larger, and intensive care units in six other hospitals were at least 96 percent full.
On Monday, there were 2,800 people with COVID-19 in Alabama hospitals, the highest total since the pandemic began.
Experts worry that the strain will only grow after the holidays, due to new infections related to travel and gatherings of family and friends.
“I think we are in serious shape. I really do, ”said Dr. Don Williamson, head of the Alabama Hospital Association. “I’m afraid our Christmas wave will go much worse than the Thanksgiving wave.”
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, breaking up with some of his southern counterparts at the time, imposed a statewide mask mandate, which has been in effect since July, but health officials have struggled to do so. people to comply. The Republican governor also issued a residence order at the beginning of the pandemic, but strongly opposed doing so again, saying, “You can’t have a life without a livelihood.”
California, on the other hand, has issued strict home residence orders in recent weeks in areas where ICU occupancy has reached 85%.
“Unfortunately, we have people still gathering in groups, traveling on holidays, doing unsafe things,” said Dr. Scott Harris, a state health officer in Alabama.
Deep South has some of the highest rates of certain chronic health conditions that increase the risk of death or serious illness caused by coronavirus. Alabama has the sixth highest adult obesity rate in the United States and ranks third in the percentage of adults with diabetes.
Alabama is also one of twelve states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and therefore has a large number of uninsured people. About 15 percent of people between the ages of 19 and 64 have no coverage, the 13th percentile in the country, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
The state has seen the closure of 17 hospitals, mostly small in rural areas, over the past decade, a trend that has allowed regional facilities to raise weakness.
At Decatur Morgan Hospital, COVID-19 deaths have tripled since September, and the intensive care unit is full, said Dr. James Boyle. The pulmonologist struggled to stay calm, stopping and pursing his lips as he discussed the possibility of taking care of the ration in the new year.
“I have practiced in this county since ’98. We’ve never had more than two or three people on flu fans in the last 20 years, “he said. “We always have many patients in intensive care during the winter. Having 16 patients on ventilators with a disease we don’t usually have is unprecedented. “
UAB Hospital, which is affiliated with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has brought in retired nurses and dozens of professors and students from its nursing school to help.
Alabama hospitals are receiving calls from neighboring states such as Mississippi and Tennessee because doctors are looking for extra space for COVID-19 patients, but are unable to help as often as in the past. The same is true in the state, with hospitals that could help care for patients after a disaster, such as a tornado unable to attend right now.
With thousands already vaccinated with the first of two doses needed to protect against COVID-19, the end of the pandemic is in sight. But in the meantime, the number of medical workers is growing.
“It simply came to our notice then. That’s part of what we do; it’s part of our training, “said Boyle. “This year’s difficulty is just a huge number. We can’t grieve for one patient before we have to go and take care of another. “
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Associated Press writer Kim Chandler contributed to the story in Montgomery, Alabama.