Unboosted people are dying and other facts from this hospital
And it may well be the leading edge of what’s coming soon to the rest of the United States.
“We expect to see other areas of the country also light up in the next several weeks,” Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
Here’s what you need to know about the surge underway now at Sparrow Hospital in Michigan’s capital:
Most patients by far are unvaccinated
The vast majority of nurse Danielle Williams’ Covid-19 patients are not vaccinated — and had no idea they could get pummeled so hard by the virus, she told CNN.
“Before they walked in the door, they had a normal life. They were healthy people. They were out celebrating Thanksgiving,” she said. “And now they’re here, with a mask on their face, teary eyed, staring at me, asking me if they’re going to live or not.”
Unvaccinated and unboosted people are dying
“We’re seeing more people die at a rate we’ve never seen die before,” said Jim Dover, president and CEO of Sparrow Health System.
“Since January, we’ve had about 289 deaths; 75% are unvaccinated people,” he said.
Of the very few vaccinated people who died, all were more than six months out from the last shot of their initial Covid-19 vaccine regimen, he said.
“So, we’ve not had a single person who has had a booster shot die from Covid.”
Younger people are getting very sick
Among the new Covid-19 victims, nurse Katie Sefton has noticed a disturbing trend.
“We’re seeing a lot of younger people. And I think that is a bit challenging,” said Sefton, a 20-year nursing veteran.
“It was an awful night,” she said. “That was one of the days I went home and just cried.”
Flu is making things worse
Influenza is much more active this year than last year, putting a strain on hospital beds, officials in Michigan told CNN.
The ER is consistently overwhelmed
The emergency department at Sparrow Hospital has been overwhelmed for over a month, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Karen Kent-VanGorder told CNN.
“Perpetually, we have had … emergency department patients in our emergency department that need to be on the floors,” she said. But “we’re stepping on the hose up here. There’s nowhere for them to go.”
“And as we go into the holidays, if the current growth rate that we’re at today (holds), we would expect to see 200 inpatient Covid patients by the end of the month — on a daily basis,” he said. And that would mean “absolutely stretching us to the breaking point.”
“We’ve already discontinued inpatient elective surgeries,” Dover said. “In order to create capacity, we took our post-anesthesia recovery care unit and converted it into another critical care unit.”
CNN’s Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.
