Hospitals in crisis as patient load sets record

Back in January, when “code blues” sounded relentlessly to summon teams for medical emergencies and morgues deployed mobile units for extra space to store bodies, Georgia got a reprieve. Cases plunged as holiday travel ended and many of the elderly became vaccinated.

This time, with vaccination rates stubbornly low and the highly contagious delta variant pervasive, hospitals expect the trendline to keep climbing well into this month. As the numbers swell, hospital beds are being filled with younger unvaccinated adults as well as children. On Friday, the state reported hospitals had 6,000 COVID-19 patients, exceeding the January peak of 5,709.

The coming days could bring further delays in care for people sick with COVID-19 or facing other medical emergencies. Atlanta’s large children’s hospitals at times were so packed Tuesday they were limiting transfers from other hospitals. Intensive care units are full at many hospitals, creating risks for all those who have to wait for a critical care bed, whether they have COVID-19 or some other dire condition. A critical nursing shortage means adding more beds in some hospitals will be pointless: There aren’t nurses available to staff them. It’s already hard or impossible to

transfer patients from small hospitals to larger ones that provide advanced care.

That has resulted in shortages of oxygen at some of the state’s rural hospitals, as they had to treat COVID-19 patients short of breath instead of transferring them. The shortage prompted Gov. Brian Kemp to loosen regulations for shipping compressed oxygen amid supply shortages.

CURTIS COMPTON/CURTIS.COMPTON@AJC.COM Registered nurse Ceri West enters one of the monoclonal antibody infusion rooms Monday to help treat COVID-19 patients at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany. Hospitals in Georgia are struggling with the number of cases.