Like so many others, the Oklahoma Hospital Association is unsure what future effects the omicron variant might have on the state.
But the organization does understand two key issues right now: Oklahoma hospitals continue to struggle with staffing shortages to care for all patients — not just those with COVID-19 — and more than 80% of COVID patients are unvaccinated.
Statewide, COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen 48% during the past month to the 592 reported Thursday from 399 on Nov. 9, according to three-day averages released by the state. The high point during the delta variant wave was 1,607 in late August.
“Likely this increase is due to fall activities,” said Lawanna Halstead, Oklahoma Hospital Association’s vice president of quality and clinical initiatives. “People coming together — Halloween, Thanksgiving. And we do feel like that it’s likely to continue to increase during the holidays.”
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Tulsa County’s COVID hospitalizations have risen 38% to 164 from 119 in the past month. Its high during delta was 504, which was also its overall record in the entire pandemic.
As of Thursday, omicron had been detected in 23 states, including Missouri, Texas and Colorado, but not in Oklahoma. However, the Healthier Oklahoma Coalition says it probably is already in the state — just not detected yet because of a lack of sufficient testing for COVID variants.
Halstead’s comments came Tuesday during the weekly Healthier Oklahoma Coalition briefing with journalists. She noted that so far influenza hospitalizations in the state haven’t been very high — about 90 so far, with only one death — and aren’t yet a heavy load for hospitals.
Dr. Dale Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID officer, noted last week that the emergence of omicron — while it is unknown how contagious it is or the severity of disease it might cause — is strong incentive to both get vaccinated and receive booster doses.
“I think there’s pretty good reason to believe that even if the vaccines don’t completely protect you against the omicron variant, they will do things that we see all the time, which is reduce your chance of being hospitalized or having severe complications,” Bratzler said. “So I strongly encourage people to both get the primary vaccine series and then to get the booster.”
Halstead said some long-term COVID patients are helping keep up the number hospitalized for the disease.
Post-acute care is an issue in the state, too.
She said hospitals have “significant difficulty” when trying to transfer COVID patients to skilled nursing or rehabilitation facilities once they are ready to be released from acute hospital care.
“This is mostly due to insurance companies delaying their approval of patients going to post-acute care,” Halstead said.
Many hospitals are still operating monoclonal antibody clinics, Halstead said, which have seen an increase in demand during the past couple of weeks. She said monoclonal antibodies can help lessen the severity of a COVID infection, hopefully avoiding the need for hospitalization.
Hospital staffing remains an issue because many health care workers are leaving for less stressful jobs or retiring, Halstead said.
Some hospitals are giving one-time bonuses, and others are paying differentials to entice employees to work overtime or different shifts. Contract staffing through agencies is a pricey proposition but it’s a potential way to shore up staffing levels.
“Staffing is still the greatest concern for our hospitals,” Halstead said.
The variant is likely being transmitted locally despite state testing not having identified the mutated strain, doctors say.
Staff Writer Corey Jones' most memorable stories of 2021
Tulsa World investigates: Oklahoma Highway Patrol fatality pursuits, deadly shootings
Perhaps more than any policing action, car chases carry enormous risks to the general public. And not only motorists – but officers, pedestrians and even individuals inside homes.
The public has a right to know how and why the Oklahoma Highway Patrol handles pursuits the way it does. But OHP didn’t want the Tulsa World to pop open its proverbial trunk for a looksee as 15 of its chases in five years have killed 18 people – eight of whom weren’t even the eluding drivers.
The World filed litigation against OHP for refusing to turn over use-of-force records in response to the World’s open records requests. OHP agreed to settle, and the World produced seven in-depth pieces from the bounty of records it eventually received from the agency.
In some instances, lack of documentation was no less troubling than the decisions or actions of troopers in a cornucopia of concerns revealed by the World.
Local health officials find bill adding state control hard to swallow after rebuffed efforts to collaborate on COVID-19
This article unveiled the Oklahoma State Department of Health’s reluctance to work with the Tulsa Health Department to combat COVID-19 and efforts to subvert THD’s independence.
A legislative attempt quietly supported by the state to give it influence over THD frustrated Dr. Bruce Dart because OSDH had repeatedly rebuffed his own efforts and those of other THD employees to willingly share data and messaging with the state.
Republican Rep. Chris Kannady wrote the bill and leveled unspecified and unsubstantiated claims of problems to justify the legislation but wouldn’t speak with me to elaborate on his comments.
After I requested an interview with a state official on this topic (and didn’t get it), Dart began receiving the data for which he had been asking the state. Eventually the proposed legislation stalled out, though it could return in the upcoming session.
Taxed by COVID-19, McAlester Regional Health Center down to last ventilator with no staff for it
I received a tip that several ambulances recently had held patients in the parking lot of the largest hospital in southeastern Oklahoma because COVID-19 patients had maxed out the facility’s capacity.
My jaw actually dropped when I found out the situation was dire. An ethics committee was set to meet in an hour to decide which COVID patients would have a shot to live on ventilators and which wouldn’t because the hospital had no one left to operate its last ventilator in the event one more patient’s condition deteriorated.
Those decisions ultimately weren’t put into action because five people on ventilators had died by the next morning, but telling the story publicly was a poignant illustration of how overwhelmed Oklahoma’s hospital system had become amid the delta variant surge.
Stitt says COVID-19 hospitalizations have been 'pretty flat' for two months, but state data show a 50% increase
Gov. Kevin Stitt has been no stranger to making misleading or false claims regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in Oklahoma, sometimes describing upward trends in cases or hospitalizations as plateaus or flat.
In this instance, a spokesperson for the governor declined to walk back or even discuss Stitt’s false comments about hospitalizations that state data showed increased by about 50%, not stayed “pretty flat” as characterized by the governor.
Journalists must hold government leaders to the paramount principles of accountability, openness and transparency, which means pointing out misleading or false claims.
Medical tents, trailer morgues and determinations on who gets a ventilator: Oklahoma hospitals shift toward crisis standards of care
I felt this story was important to write to summarize and highlight how bleak Oklahoma’s hospital situation had become. There were so many red flag indicators popping up on a regular basis that I wanted to combine them into one article to set the scene and illustrate how overwhelmed hospitals were across the state in various ways.
I also wanted to document that the Oklahoma Hospital Association disagreed with the state health commissioner’s contention that Gov. Kevin Stitt’s emergency rules – not emergency order – gave hospitals all the flexibility they had under the prior emergency order that Stitt refused to re-issue.
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