As COVID-19 admissions stack up faster than ever, Oklahoma medical professionals aren’t certain what the breaking point will be for hospital capacity after many nurses were driven out of the profession by how awful the pandemic became in the state.
What is certain: Hospitals won’t be able to handle as many people sickened by the more-contagious delta variant as they did during the cold-weather COVID surge that activated crisis standards of care in the state.
“We lost a lot of nurses through the COVID pandemic,” said Dr. Dale Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID officer, during a livestream press conference with news reporters Thursday. “Some gave up, changed jobs, went working remotely — lots of reasons.
“Back in January and February we handled the capacity with the big numbers of cases. We can’t do it now because we don’t have enough nurses and personnel to take care of all those patients.”
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Oklahoma ranks among the 10 worst states in the nation for new cases, new deaths, hospital admissions and test positivity as of the latest federal data Wednesday.
The three-day average of statewide hospitalizations on Thursday hit 954, which is up 29% from 739 on Monday and is on par with early November levels.
Only 37 days elapsed to reach that level in the ongoing surge from 116 inpatients reported June 29. It took five months to do that in 2020.
The statewide record is 1,995 patients reported in late December.
“I’m quite concerned about hospitals being overwhelmed, principally because we just don’t have the staffing that we had when we dealt with the first round,” Bratzler said. “We just simply do not have the staffing. There’s a severe nursing shortage.
“We’re doing everything we can to support that with other techs and staff, but there just aren’t enough people to take care of (patients) if we were to fill up our hospitals again.”
The recent three-day average of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Tulsa County climbed to 351 on Thursday, up 20% from 292 on Monday and on par with mid- to late November levels.
The Tulsa County record is 468 inpatients reported in mid-January.
Bratzler said Oklahoma is “way ahead” of the new cases per day mark at the point a year ago when the school season began.
He said he thinks Oklahoma can expect a “sharp rise” in cases and hospitalizations once students return to in-person learning.
The CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations are for students to wear masks, but Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill from the state Legislature that makes mask mandates in schools illegal unless the governor declares a state of emergency — which Stitt has said he has no intention of doing.
Bratzler noted that the CDC has extensively investigated delta variant outbreaks and believes it might be as contagious as the chicken pox.
“You would not send your kids to school if you knew there was an outbreak of chicken pox in the school, particularly if your kids had not been vaccinated,” Bratzler said.
“You do not want your kids to be in school without a mask if you know that there’s a virus transmitting in the community that is highly contagious, and that’s what we have with COVID-19.”
Featured video: Dr. Dale Bratzler, OU Health chief COVID officer, says natural immunity is real but not helpful at preventing variant infections
Dr. Dale Bratzler, OU Health chief COVID officer, says natural immunity is real but not helpful at preventing variant infections.
