Health department officials scold weekend partiers
Officials with the health department are none too pleased with Memphians partying away while ignoring basic public health guidance as a record number of residents enter hospitals sick with COVID-19.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Memphians learned of a party thrown by Curtis Givens at the In Love Club on Winchester Road near Bill Morris Parkway. Local officials sharply criticized the event, which was attended by hundreds, many of whom were seen not observing social distancing or wearing masks.
Shelby County Health Officer Bruce Randolph offered a strong rebuke of such individuals during Tuesday’s joint task force briefing.
“You have to ask yourself ‘why?’ ”, said Randolph, referring to the choice of individuals to party in the middle of a pandemic. “Is it because you’re tired? Fatigued? You don’t want the government to tell you what to do? Or is it because you don’t care? You’re selfish?”
Such parties have become known as potential “super-spreader” events in the public health sphere, and Randolph promised accountability for such event organizers. The club’s event, Shelby County Health Department Director Al
isa Haushalter confirmed, did not have a permit from the health department.
Attendance by a younger crowd at the club could play further into a narrative backed by health department data that shows younger residents are contracting the virus, and then bringing it home to older relatives.
As of Friday, 20.5%, of all COVID-19 cases contracted in Shelby County are among residents between the ages of 25 and 34, making 25 - 34 year-olds the largest age group in Shelby County that contracts COVID-19. The secondhighest age group is 35 -44 year-olds, who represent 16.7% of all contracted ages.
By contrast, the bulk of COVID-19 fatalities in Shelby County occur among those 55 and older. Shelby County residents 55 and older make up over 88% of COVID-19 deaths.
“We can’t be everywhere at all times,” Rudolph said. “You, as an individual, must exercise the responsibility, discipline, and commitment to remain safe and protect yourself, and protect others.”
Just after Thanksgiving, Shelby County exceeds hospitalization predictions
As of Tuesday, 501 patients were in the region’s hospital system sick with COVID-19. Several dozen more are hospitalized in both ICU and acute care rooms with COVID-19 symptoms but haven’t been formally diagnosed.
The number, Haushalter said, exceeds expectations.
“Early on, about two or three weeks ago, we predicted we would have 500 in the hospital by Christmas,” Haushalter said. “Now we have 500 at the beginning of December which means if we look several weeks out, and we anticipate a surge — even if it’s a small surge — from Thanksgiving, we are going to have significant challenges in the hospital systems around the Christmas holiday.”
The issue, she explained, isn’t just the number of beds available. The region’s hospital system has had the ability to expand the number of beds since the start of the pandemic, before the overflow hospital at the old Commercial Appeal building would have to be brought online.
But beds are one thing. Staffing those beds with qualified nurses and medical technicians, Haushalter said, is a bigger challenge.
“There’s a significant shortage of nurses across the country, we are not likely to be able to recruit people to come here to assist us,” Haushalter said. “We’re going to have to rely on local resources instead.”
Local resources, in this case, means the current number of nurses already working within hospitals, and “doing everything they can,” Haushalter said, to accommodate the climbing number of patients from not only Shelby County, but surrounding counties without sufficient medical infrastructure like hospitals.
On Monday, the region’s two largest hospital systems, Methodist Lebonhuer Healthcare and Baptist Memorial Health Care, enacted temporary pauses on elective procedures in order to save beds and nurses for critically ill patients.
“We’re doing all that we can locally, but this is a concern to us,” Haushalter said.
The vaccine is welcomed news, but with it comes a different staffing challenge
Shelby County is set to receive the first round of doses, 22,000 of them, sometime after Dec. 15, and the county will have to find qualified people to administer it.
“The Pfizer vaccine is a very tenuous vaccine,” Haushalter said. “We need to be able to make sure that once it is received that we get it to the field quickly and we administer it quickly.”
To that end, Haushalter said the department would be working with local organizations that have personnel who are licensed to administer injections.
The category of who would be qualified to administer injections stretches beyond nurses and licensed practical nurses. Paramedics, pharmacists and pharmacy techs, emergency medical technicians and paramedics are all qualified to administer injections.
Haushalter said the health department would soon issue a sweeping call for volunteers to help move the vaccine throughout the county.