The University of Kansas Health System on Tuesday sadly marked the 500th death from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
The KU Health System had a total of 503 cumulative deaths from the beginning of the pandemic until Tuesday morning, according to a hospital spokesman. Thirteen patients have died of COVID-19 within the past seven days at the hospital.
During a morning medical update, Dr. Karin Porter-Williamson, a palliative care specialist at the University of Kansas Health System, said the vast majority of the patients who are dying are not vaccinated.
As medical professionals, they are doing everything they can with all the tools available to help patients get better, she said. However, sometimes patients die.
She has been more struck by younger patients dying currently, and this spike has been very different from the earlier ones, she said.
Staff members are facing challenges, with beds full and some health professionals getting sick, she said. They are watching out for each other a lot, trying to get rest and healing the best they can.
They have had to do their best to keep families updated by Zoom, and through technology, they can see their loved ones, she said. A limited number of people are allowed to visit the bedside, and visitors who are sick or have symptoms cannot visit in person, she added.
“Death and accumulation of grief is really hard on everyone, and on families,” Dr. Porter-Williamson said.
She described a family meeting where a man in his 40s was dying. The message had a devastating effect on his family.
When one of the family members asked if vaccination could have prevented his death, all Dr. Porter-Williamson could do was nod, she said.
“I’m a very emotional person, usually able to contain it, but I found myself in tears with this family,” she said. “I found myself in a situation we could have avoided. I told them, we’re doing everything we can for him, but we’re out of tools.”
Medical professionals sometimes get frustrated with knowing a death was preventable.
“Doctors like me write orders and leave the room. There are five ICU nurses who are at that bedside all day, every day. And they are so tired. I have profound respect for these bedside providers who give their souls to help everybody through this,” Dr. Porter-Williamson said. “I hope it doesn’t take all of us losing people we love in order to do the thing that’s most helpful, which is vaccination.”
Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at KU Health System, said the 106 COVID-19 patients in the hospital on Tuesday morning were a lot higher number than last Labor Day.
Last year, they didn’t feel that spike effect from everything opening up again until late November, he said.
People need to be thoughtful about the ripple effect of cases following the opening of more activities and society, he said.
Vaccination is the answer to the latest spike, Dr. Stites believes. Even though people can transmit the Delta variant while vaccinated, there is a much lower risk of serious illness and death among the vaccinated, he said.
Nationally, about 98 percent of people who die of COVID-19 are unvaccinated, he said. There has, however, been a small percentage of deaths of vaccinated patients with COVID-19, most of whom were immunocompromised.
“The key has always been, vaccination prevents serious hospitalization and death,” Dr. Stites said.
Even though society is more open, case volume is higher and school has started, Dr. Stites said there are two things he has noticed that are positive developments. The first is that over 50 percent of Americans are now vaccinated.
The second is the example of South America, where cases have been greatly reduced. The vaccination rate in South America, where there was not a huge mask fight, was 70 percent, he said.
What they’re seeing in the United States is that areas with high vaccination rates are much safer than areas with low vaccination rates, Dr. Stites said. So the answer to a safe fall is the vaccination rate, he added. Masking works, vaccination works and being outside in public spaces works, he added.
For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/kuhospital/videos/375399440720404.
In the news: Grant announcement for building health care workforce
KU Medical Center was in the news on Tuesday in an announcement from U.S. Senators Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall, Kansas Republicans.
The senators announced that the Department of Health and Human Services has awarded more than $270,000 to the KU Medical Center to provide students with learning experiences that would grow their interest and knowledge about the health sciences, with a goal of building a stronger health care workforce.
The project, funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, will establish a learning consortium of teachers, students and researchers committed to bringing community-based health issues into the classroom.
Specifically, KUMC will establish a Teachers and Students for Community Oriented Research and Education: Linking Industry, Faculty, and Teachers (TSCORE LIFT) program, according to the announcement. The program builds on their existing project to create a community among five Kansas health systems, five Kansas universities, and five Kansas school districts to develop and test a series of three educational interventions along the Kansas Health and Biosciences Career Pathway.
As part of the project, 25 teachers will deliver educational content and provide experiences in the health care industry for an estimated 1,400 students in the state of Kansas, according to the announcement. The areas will include Hays, Topeka, Wichita, Lawrence, and Kansas City.
The KUMC program will work with the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools.