Category: Health

‘Our most difficult point’: Unvaxxed COVID patients overflow hospitals as doctors beg for help

by Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector

Dr. Jennifer Schrimsher, a physician at Lawrence Memorial Health, was up until 2 a.m. revising contingency plans.

The hospital, like all others in Kansas, is coping with unprecedented numbers of COVID-19 patients and staff members out sick with the virus.

She doesn’t know what to do.

“We’ve offered insane amounts of overtime,” Schrimsher said. “People won’t take it because they can’t, they just mentally or physically cannot anymore. And it is heartbreaking to look at that situation and think that we may have to deliver substandard care, practice outside of our normal standards of care and just try to piece together, you know, care for patients. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Schrimsher, who is also the deputy public health officer for Douglas County, joined 17 other medical officials from Kansas and western Missouri hospitals in sounding a clarion call for public support during a news conference Wednesday. The Lawrence hospital is canceling surgeries and transferring patients to Oklahoma, she said.

Medical providers in Kansas City, Wichita, Topeka, Salina, Hays, Garden City and elsewhere provided similar reports. With record numbers of COVID-19 patients, and up to one-third of staff out sick, there is no bed space is available. At least 80% of patients in each facility are unvaccinated, including nearly 100% of patients in intensive care.

Data from Mission Control, the software hospitals use to find available bed space, shows the number of patients who died while awaiting transfer increased from eight in November to 41 last month.

There is no end in sight.

“This is our most difficult moment in the pandemic,” said Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer of the University of Kansas Health System.

He recalled a recent conversation with the chief medical officer from a rural area who told him, “We don’t do dialysis, but we can’t get anybody transferred out, and these patients are dying.” The doctor explained that he opened up a textbook, put in some catheters and tried to figure out how to do it.

“You have to face the facts head on,” Stites said. “The facts are we have an exploding number of COVID-19 patients, people aren’t using good infection control, governments have backed off mask mandates because they think they’re unpopular, and as a result, patients and people are suffering in our hospitals.”

Several officials called for Gov. Laura Kelly to issue a new emergency declaration to unlock federal aid and support from the Kansas National Guard. A spokeswoman for the governor didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Republican leaders in the Legislature forced the previous declaration to expire in mid-June, as the delta variant was arriving in the state.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show 57.2% of Kansans are fully vaccinated, including 68.6% of adults.

The latest surge, Stites said, appears to involve a 50-50 combination of delta and omicron strains of the virus. Doctors pushed back on the popular narrative that omicron is no more serious than the common cold.

“Anybody who thinks they’re not going to die from COVID-19 now because it’s omicron, that’s just wrong,” said Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control at KU Health.

The KU Health system has 90 patients with active infections, including six who are fully vaccinated and 19 in ICU. More than 600 staff members, about 5% of the workforce, are out sick.

Dr. Kimberly Megow, chief medical officer at HCA Midwest Health System, which serves the KC metro area, said the hospital had to defer 128 surgeries this week.

She said the hospital is nearing the point of “crisis standard of care,” meaning doctors will start determining who gets care and who is left to die.

“That’s how bad it could get if we are completely overwhelmed, and we’re at that point already, and we suddenly have an onslaught of additional patients,” Megow said. “There have to be tough decisions made and no one on this call wants to be faced with making those decisions.”

In Salina, eight COVID-19 patients in need of care are waiting for a room. In Topeka, patients are overflowing into the recovery room at Saint Francis. In Garden City, the ICU has been full for four months.

Stites said the decision by public schools to end mask mandates as students return from winter break is “a perfectly terrible idea.”

“Kids are all gonna get sick, your staff is gonna get sick, and the school is gonna get closed,” Stites said.

At Children’s Mercy, in Kansas City, Missouri, the number of pediatric patients being treated for COVID-19 doubled in the past week, from 15 to 30. Previously, the number was never higher than 22 throughout the pandemic. One third of the current patients are in ICU. Additionally, 327 staff members are out sick.

Dr. Jennifer Watts, chief emergency medical officer at Children’s Mercy, said we know masks are safe and work on children in schools. Typically, she said, the kids aren’t the ones complaining about masks.

“It is hard to look at a child that is sick and to have that thought in your mind: If we would have worn masks in school, could this have been prevented?” Watts said. “And to have that conversation with a parent is heart-wrenching. So yeah, we are devastated that kids are not wearing masks in school.”

Dr. Kevin Dishman, the chief medical officer at Stormont Vail in Topeka, said health care providers need the community’s help to mitigate the dire consequences of failing to follow basic precautions.

“We need everyone to get vaccinated, we need everyone to wear a mask, we need everyone to social distance, and we need them to do it now,” Dishman said. “Our community can help us stop the pandemic, but we’ve got to have the cooperation of everyone in the community. People that have waved the flag of personal choice are extending this pandemic.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/01/05/our-most-difficult-point-unvaxxed-covid-patients-overflow-hospitals-as-doctors-beg-for-help/

UG plans to apply for FEMA grant reimbursement for COVID expenses

A proposal to apply for budget authorization for FEMA reimbursable expenses related to COVID-19 moved forward at Monday night’s Unified Government Economic Development and Finance Committee meeting.

In November, the federal government extended the FEMA reimbursement period through April 1, according to UG officials. Previously, it had been set to expire in December.

The UG will be able to apply for federal FEMA grants to assist it with its recovery efforts and vaccination efforts, said Kathleen von Achen, chief financial officer for the UG. The expenses are reimbursed at 100 percent. That will allow the UG to use county taxpayer funds and ARPA (American Rescue Plan) funding it previously received for other programs.

Von Achen said there is a total $5.76 million request made in three different applications. The first application was submitted in 2021 and the UG already has received some funds from it, she said. The next two applications will be submitted soon, she added. They need budget authority to spend the funds so they can get reimbursed later for them, she said.

Wesley McKain, a manager with the Health Department, said in answer to a question from Commissioner Gayle Townsend that the only vaccination site currently open through the Health Department is the Kmart site at 78th and State. He said they are paying $11,000 a month on rent for that site. They also paid rent on the Best Buy site at 106th, now closed. They did not pay rent on the Kansas National Guard Armory site on 18th and Ridge, as they were allowed to use it without charge. Currently the Armory has a COVID testing site run by the state of Kansas.

According to McKain, major cost drivers for COVID-19 expenses include testing, contact tracing, communications, community engagement, social services and support, and vaccinations. Only contact tracing is not eligible for reimbursement by FEMA, he said.

Construction took place so quickly on the Turner Logistics Center, along the Turner Diagonal south of State Avenue, that a community improvement district is no longer needed, according to UG officials. The project has already met its minimum building goals.

In other action, the EDF Committee voted to end the community improvement district for the Turner Logistics Center project and repeal an ordinance concerning minimum building improvements of 1 million square feet constructed.

According to Katherine Carttar, UG economic development director, this is something to celebrate because the Turner Logistics Center has exceeded its completion goal by four years.

She said when the UG structured the industrial revenue bonds for the project, they wanted to make sure the local government would be paid back for its portion of the upfront investment in the new I-70 interchange at the Turner Diagonal. The project met its minimum construction goals quickly, she said, and the CID is not needed.

Federal judge blocks Biden vaccine mandate for Head Start workers in 24 states

by Jacob Fischler, Kansas Reflector

A Louisiana federal judge has put a hold on President Joe Biden’s mandate that Head Start workers be vaccinated against COVID-19.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who previously ruled against a vaccine mandate for health care workers, issued a preliminary injunction on New Year’s Day restricting the executive branch from enforcing in 24 states a mandate for Head Start, a federal pre-K program for low-income families.

The mandate called for all employees, volunteers and contractors with Head Start to be fully vaccinated by the end of January. Children under 5 who attend the program are not yet eligible to be vaccinated and at risk of COVID-19 infections.

A group of 24 Republican state attorneys general, led by Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio and Tennessee, challenged the mandate last month.

Doughty, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, expressed skepticism about the federal government’s ability to contain the pandemic, including through vaccine mandates.

“In the immortal words of President Ronald Reagan the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’ ” he wrote in the order’s second paragraph. “In order to help rid the United States of the COVID-19 virus, the government has imposed four vaccine mandates,” including the one for Head Start.

Still, he said the decision was not about the wisdom of the mandate, but the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.

Executive agencies “DO NOT have the power to impose the Head Start Mandate” without an act of Congress, he wrote.

Doughty’s order will remain in effect until the final resolution of the case or by orders in his court or by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Friday on whether the order invalidating a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers and the vaccine mandate for health care workers should stay in place.

Medical experts have urged vaccinations as the best method of preventing COVID-19. White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci told NBC News last month that the “real problem” with the current omicron variant wave was that many people eligible for vaccines have not received them.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, fewer than two-thirds of U.S. residents 5 and older are fully vaccinated, and only about one-third of those who are fully vaccinated have received a recommended booster dose.

In addition to his ruling on the health care workers mandate, Doughty also struck down Biden’s pause of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters last year, a major setback for the president’s climate change agenda.

Although he considers himself conservative, Doughty has said he does not consider politics when making judicial decisions.

Trump appointed Doughty in 2017 and the U.S. Senate approved him, 98-0, the following year.

The White House referred a request for comment to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Representatives for HHS did not immediately respond.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/01/03/federal-judge-blocks-biden-vaccine-mandate-for-head-start-workers-in-24-states/