The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Majority of hospitalized patients unvaccinated
The group of doctors at the news conference said the sheer volume of patients is making it hard to care for everyone quickly. It’s also affected people coming in with nonCOVID-19 ailments.
“Our emergency room, like so many, is overrun right now,” said Dr. Robert Jansen, chief medical officer of Grady Health System. “We have more patients in the emergency department waiting for care than at almost any other time. And this is seen at every hospital in the city and across the state.”
As of Friday, COVID-19 patients made up almost 29% of hospitalizations in Georgia.
Hospitals brace for even more patients
COVID-19 cases are increasing so quickly among the unvaccinated that Georgia hospitals are bracing for a flood of patients that could exceed the January peak, the worst of the pandemic. And they’re not expecting things to let up until well into September or even October.
Some Georgia hospitals have already started pausing elective surgeries to preserve hospital beds and staff because of the flood of COVID-19 patients.
Northeast Georgia Health System erected tents at its Gainesville and Braselton locations in order to add capacity to its emergency department, which was so crowded at points last week that doctors
and nurses had to see patients in ambulances while they waited for space to open up inside the ER.
A number of hospital systems are directing EMS to divert patients to other hospitals
if possible.
“We don’t have the luxury of saying we’re full and we’re closed. We’re not a hotel,” said Grady’s Jansen. “People will continue to come, and our staff will continue to cope and find places to take care of these patients. But it is going to be difficult, and … it won’t make people happy.”
Some systems, including Wellstar, have restricted visitors to protect their patients from being infected.
More kids going to Georgia’s hospitals
The soaring number of children contracting COVID-19 is also straining Georgia’s pediatric health care system.
More kids than ever before are suffering from coronavirus cases so severe that they need to be hospitalized, filling pediatric wards at a time when physicians are also contending with an unseasonable surge of other respiratory viruses.
Though ER doctors and pediatric specialists interviewed say they’re able to keep up with cases for now, many fear what could come in the weeks ahead as the delta variant tears across the region and schools continue with in-person learning, with masks often optional.
Many are alarmed at the increase of cases in such a short amount of time. In Georgia, the number of hospitalized children under 4 years old nearly quadrupled over the first couple weeks of the month, from 8 to 31, according to the state Department of Public Health. Among schoolaged children 5 to 17, the number has almost doubled, from 28 to 50.
“What we’re seeing is that a low-frequency event — which is needing to be hospitalized — is happening a lot more frequently because so many kids are being infected in our communities right now,” said Dr. Stephen Thacker, associate chief medical officer at Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah.