Virus continues to test hospitals
Medical facilities working with limited supplies, staff as states reopen
SILVER SPRING, MD.—From a hospital on the edge of the Navajo Nation to the suburbs of the U.S. capital, front-line medical workers in coronavirus hot spots are struggling to keep up with a crushing load of patients while lockdown restrictions are lifting in many other parts of the U.S.
Governors are starting to slowly reopen some segments of their local economies, pointing to evidence that COVID-19 deaths and new hospitalizations are peaking or starting to recede in their states.
While many state and local officials see modest signs of progress in the pandemic fight, coronavirus outbreaks are testing public health networks in pockets of the U.S.
Among them is a suburb of Washington, D.C. The head of a hospital system in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, a majority Black community bordering the city, said the area’s intensive care units “are bursting at the seams.” Meanwhile, a civil-rights group’s lawsuit claimed the county’s jail failed to stop an “uncontrolled” coronavirus outbreak and isolated infected prisoners in cells with walls covered in feces, mucus and blood.
“I would say we are the epicentre of the epicentre,” said Dr. Joseph Wright, interim CEO of University of Maryland Capital Region Health.
The hospital in Gallup, N.M., is on the front lines of a grinding outbreak on the Navajo Nation that recently prompted a 10-day lockdown with police setting up roadblocks to discourage nonemergency shopping.
Medical workers last week staged a protest over inadequate staffing and to urge the CEO of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital to resign. The departure last week of the hospital’s lung specialist has limited its ability to treat COVID-19 patients, as people with acute respiratory symptoms are transported to Albuquerque some two hours away. About 17 nurses were cut from the hospital’s workforce in March, at least 32 workers have tested positive for the virus and its intensive care unit is at capacity.
“My staff is physically exhausted, emotionally exhausted and they are suffering from moral injury,” chief nursing officer Felicia Adams said.
The U.S. has the largest coronavirus outbreak in the world by far: more than 1.4 million infections and nearly 85,000 deaths, according to a tally by
Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 4.4 million and killed more than 300,000. Experts say the actual numbers are likely far higher.
The pressure is on to staunch job losses in the U.S. after unemployment soared to 14.7% in April, the highest since the Great Depression. Another nearly three million applied for unemployment benefits last week as more companies slashed jobs.
Roughly 36 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the country in the two months since the coronavirus first forced millions of businesses to close their doors and shrink their workforces, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday.
Many states are lifting lockdowns, leading to tentative resumptions of commerce, but there are frustrations among some people still living under strong restrictions. In Michigan, hundreds of people angry over Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, some of them armed, rallied in heavy rain outside the state capitol on Thursday, while about 500 people protested outside the residence of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Even in places that have relaxed restrictions, hospitals continue to operate on an emergency footing.
Georgia provided a network of hospitals with extra nurses so exhausted employees could take some time off and recover. The Northeast Georgia Health System, which operates four hospitals, is still struggling to buy the disposable protective gowns it needs. It has assigned workers to collect and sanitize suits so they can be reused, and community volunteers are sewing gowns and masks.
“That’s our most critical need,” said Tracy Vardeman, the health system’s chief strategy officer. “We’re going through as many as 6,000 a day.”