SF. GEORGE – Senator Don Ipson of Utah can’t think of anyone he knew had been infected with COVID-19 over the summer.
That has changed in the months since then. Ipson, R-St. George said he now knows several people who contracted it, were hospitalized and even a few who died from complications. Then, just a few weeks ago, he toured at Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. Louis. George, along with some of his fellow lawmakers, and directly assisted with the issues that hospital staff need to address to meet the needs of COVID-19 patients.
The tour was open, he said. Reflecting on Tuesday, he called it “humiliating” and “scary.” For him, he hit close to home because two of his nieces work in health care just like the staff he worked hard for at work.
“It was pretty daunting for me,” Ipson said, remembering the tour. “To see the extended intensive unit in the other areas, the other wings of the hospital and the statistics that they use the beds today – what an incredible job the hospital has done to help us get through this.”
Ipson was one of several lawmakers in southern Utah who gathered online for a virtual meeting with Dixie Regional Medical Center leaders, Intermountain health professionals and members of the media to discuss the tour and thank hospital staff for it. what I do every day.
During the nearly hour-long sitting, those lawmakers – Ipson; Senator Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City; Rep. Walt Brooks, R-St. George; Rep. Brad Last, R-Hurricane; Rep. Rex Shipp, R-Cedar City; and Rep. Lowry Snow, R-Santa Clara, spoke about their appreciation for front-line workers after the hospital tour and urged people to be careful in the direction of the Christmas holidays.
“We have to be careful as we head towards Christmas Day, because we – you know, 30% of the places where this COVID is transmitted to other people are in our homes,” Ipson said. “We need to protect our health in our homes.”
The situation of COVID-19 before Christmas
Their message has emerged as the number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to decline slowly across the state, but hospitalizations and test positivity rates remain too high for comfort.
COVID-19 cases nationwide have not risen as much as public health experts feared after Thanksgiving, based on trends from previous holidays this year. Experts from the Utah Department of Health and Intermountain Healthcare attributed the fact that he welcomed the lack of people following the recommendations and limitation of holiday meetings.
This is the same conclusion that Dixie Regional Medical Director Dr. Patrick Carroll drew from data in southern Utah.
“We are pleased to see that the growth we were expecting has not taken place the way we thought it would,” he said. That tells me we have a significant percentage of our population in southern Utah who have followed the recommendation of our government officials, our health professionals, and our local mayors.
This does not mean that Utah is still out of the woods, which is why similar recommendations regarding holiday gatherings are in effect before Christmas.
The seven-day average of the COVID-19 case state is declining again as we move toward Christmas. It fell from 3,125 cases a day on December 6 to 2,478 cases a day since Tuesday. That being said, the state’s positivity rate remains high after going through a trend roller coaster. It peaked at 27.2% on December 1 and fell to 22.2% by December 13, then returned to 23.7% by December 16.
The other problem is that state-level admissions, which show signs of deceleration, remain high. As of Tuesday, 544 people had been hospitalized because of COVID-19, which includes 202 cases of intensive care. The use of ICUs at referral centers and at all state-level hospitals is still above the 85% threshold decided by state health care providers and was the case in December.
These numbers do not indicate each hospital. Carroll said there were 67 patients with COVID-19 on Tuesday at Dixie Regional Medical Center, which is another record set for the hospital since the pandemic began. The hospital also has 37 intensive care patients, which forced the hospital to use emergency beds, as the maximum intensive care unit is 32 beds.
“We continue to find ways to provide each of these patients with hospital care, but we must also recognize that it is about emergency care,” he said. We do not provide normal care for intensive care patients in the normal place where we would like to provide care.
The hospital faced an average of seven days of more than 2.5 deaths a day due to COVID-19 last week, Carroll added.
The public health department in southwestern Utah, where the hospital is located, has reported 130 deaths since the pandemic began – the third of 13 local health departments. Only Salt Lake County (515) and Utah County (198) have more. These deaths were difficult for doctors and nurses, Carroll explained.
“When they have a patient, despite their efforts, despite the efforts they have made, I can see that a patient who has years left to give in to this disease is more difficult than the high census; this is more difficult than a lot of incoming patients, “he said.” We want to prevent devastating effects; we want to prevent death … Collectively, as a society, we do it much better by preventing disease than when patients get to the hospital. “.
After dealing online with the skepticism of COVID-19 deniers, the hospital offered the representatives a tour of its unit. Hospital officials also posted a virtual tour of the facility on social media on December 8, which aimed to show everyone the work they were doing and the situation inside the hospital.
Many of the representatives who visited the hospital agreed with Ipson and also called it “worrying.” They thanked the health workers for their continued efforts.
“When you actually see him and talk to the health care providers – the people who work there – and find out how long it took us in our community to give to the sick and suffering, it’s stressful,” Snow said. “And also when you count the number of people we’ve lost in our state and southern Utah. Some of them are people we know. It’s real; the pandemic has taken people’s lives and we must continue to be vigilantes. “
While the representatives did not necessarily all agree on issues such as ordering the mask warrant, they urged people to follow guidelines such as wearing masks.
Snow, Vickers and Shipp said they noticed a “change in climate and attitude” in the region as its largest hospital began to overcrowd. Many residents began wearing masks, physically distancing themselves, and canceling holiday gathering plans – no matter how difficult.
“I know that through social networks there are those people who say nothing who say,” This is a violation of our freedom. It’s not so critical, “I’m glad most people don’t listen to these things,” Shipp said.
Vickers also discussed some of the conspiracy theories floating around the masks and hospitalizations he gave, which he pointed out could be easily dismantled.
“It was frustrating, in many ways, to see different theories with social media and other things,” he said.
Carroll said that if people continue to follow public health guidelines and limit holiday meetings, he is confident it will help reduce COVID-19 transmission, which will lead to fewer hospitalizations and coronavirus-related deaths. This would be a big boost for hospital staff who are “exhausted”, even if additional staff has been brought in to help increase the number of new cases.
Vaccines in progress
Of course, Tuesday’s online meeting came a week after hospitals began vaccinating front-line workers. Dr. Kristin Dascomb, Intermountain Healthcare’s medical director for infection prevention for employee health, said nearly 5,000 Intermountain employees have already received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
State health department data show that 326 people received the vaccine in the Southwest Utah Public Health Department.
While urging people to follow the guidelines to reduce the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the region, Ipson also said he hopes people will be vaccinated once the vaccines are available to the public.
He said he was old enough to remember the problems with polio and measles, which were eliminated with the development of vaccines. That is why he intends to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is available to him.
“It’s just another step in trying to make the world healthier (and) to reduce the pandemic,” he said. “I can hardly understand that people would not want to be vaccinated. Science is there. They tested it; it works … I would encourage everyone to really give it a lot of thought. “
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