Hospitalizations have grown from 12,000, a month ago, to more than 61,000 now, as states like Mississippi say the contagious variant is sweeping over them “like a tsunami.” With coronavirus infections on the rise again in the U.S., hospitals across the country are trying to meet the needs of thousands of patients who are testing positive for COVID-19, and are in need of medical care. One state that has seen a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations has been Nevada, where case levels have swelled by nearly 200% in the last month, the state’s highest level since February, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Basically, we’re reliving 2020 in 2021,” Dr. Angie Honsberg, medical director for the intensive care unit at University Medical Center told ABC News. “We, unfortunately, are back to having a very high number of COVID patients. We have had a break for the last two and a half months and unfortunately, now we’re back to feeling like we were back in January in February when close to half of our ICU was critically ill patients with COVID respiratory failure.” Since mid-June, the average number of patients being admitted to the hospital each day with COVID-19 in Nevada has tripled, according to the CDC. This marks the highest number of patients seeking care in more than five months. “The current group of patients seems to get sick quicker than the patients that we saw with the earlier COVID outbreak and we’re also seeing, for the most part, a younger group of patients,” Honsberg said. Some of the patients have very severe pneumonia, Honsberg added. A similar message is conveyed by Robin Ringler, charge nurse in UMC’s Medical ICU, who said that the patients she is seeing in the ICU are very sick, many struggling to breathe, and on ventilators. In fact, she said, some of these patients are so sick “that the doctors currently are talking about doing tracheostomy on them, and that is going to keep them on the ventilator for prolonged periods of time because they cannot breathe on their own.” Ringer’s team is now anticipating more COVID-19 ICU admissions, with a growing number of COVID patients appearing in the emergency room.
“In the last two weeks, we’ve had a real increase in COVID infections in the hospital. Our COVID numbers have gone up so high. They’ve almost, I think they quadrupled from two weeks ago,” Ringler said. “The number of patients seeking treatment has been getting higher every week.”
The increases are a discouraging development, said Ringler, when vaccines were introduced, and cases began to decline, her team thought they may have been finally out of the woods. Nick Note: It’s a lot worse then they are telling you. Save Your Life (Salvavida) Mask up, Vitamin up, Isolate up, Test up, We can help you now vitamins, test kits and masks are on giveaway. FREE Bonuses galore in our store.