NEW ORLEANS — Patients with the delta variant of COVID-19 have been pouring into hospitals across the state, and most of them haven't been vaccinated.
Ochsner doctors tell WWLTV's Meg Farris that they don't see an end in sight for the fourth surge of COVID cases They expect the number of sick people to keep going up for several weeks.
The sheer number of COVID patients seeking and getting medical treatment has been straining healthcare systems like Ochsner, spreading health care workers thinner and leaving some patients waiting for healthcare.
“So it is absolutely reaching a critical situation. We are looking at other ways to open bed capacity,” said Warner Thomas, President and CEO of Ochsner Health.
The delta variant is gripping health care resources across Ochsner.
- 890 hospitalized with COVID
- Up 73% from last week
- 60 of those patients just added last night
- 90% are not vaccinated.
- 21,000 tests were done this week. Nearly 20% positive
- 7 are pediatric patients. 24.5% of the young now test positive
- More 20, 30, 40-year-olds are being hospitalized
But the number Ochsner doctors want to stress is zero — there are no people in the hospital with side effects from the vaccine. Not one.
“If folks don't get vaccinated, if they don't mask, they are going to come to the hospital because they are going to get COVID,” said Thomas.
This is causing long wait times in Ochsner urgent care clinics and emergency departments.
Non-emergency surgeries have been cancelled. That’s down 60 percent on the Ochsner Jefferson main campus.
Even living donor transplants patients have to wait.
“A kidney transplant patient — that's several more weeks perhaps of being on dialysis,” said Dr. Robert Hart, Chief Medical Officer at Ochsner Health.
Nurses and respiratory therapists are in short supply. Staff is constantly reassigned to care for COVID patients.
“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, so there is a fatigue factor. ...It is mentally and emotionally taxing to be doing this a fourth time,” said Dr. Hart.
Physicians continue to stress that even people who've had COVID-19 already still need to get the vaccine. Patients who have recovered from COVID-19 don't have immunity to the delta variant, but those who've been vaccinated do.
“That vaccine does give a broader range of immunity than perhaps native infection does,” explained Dr. Katherine Baumgarten, Medical Director of Infection Control and Prevention at Ochsner Health.
Looking ahead, Ochsner doctors are also concerned about the next mutation, keeping an eye on one already out there called delta plus.
As of Thursday, 67 percent of people who work at Ochsner have at least received their first dose of the vaccine.
Pfizer is expected to be fully approved by the FDA in a few weeks, and at that time, vaccines will be mandatory for Ochsner employees.