As COVID slows, state still lacks ICU beds
Workers under strain despite hopeful trends
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are coming down in Oklahoma after the state’s rapid, delta-variant fueled spike over the summer.
On Tuesday, Oklahoma’s seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases reported was 1,690, down from a peak of just over 2,800 at the end of August. Hospitalizations, which had topped 1,500 in August, were still over 1,000 on Tuesday across the state.
“I’m hopeful that our state will continue to see positive progress in our pandemic response,” Health Commissioner Dr. Lance Frye said in a statement Monday. “We are cautiously optimistic about
this downward trend and are thankful for the hard work of Oklahomans across the state that got us here.”
He said Oklahomans need to stay vigilant to ensure the trends continue, and urged those who haven’t been vaccinated against COVID-19 to do so now.
Despite the hopeful trends, hospitals and health care workers are still under strain, leaders of the Healthier Oklahoma Coalition said Tuesday.
“We still are very much struggling in the state in terms of ICU beds,” said Dr. Jean Hausheer, who chairs the coalition.
Dr. David Kendrick, the founder and CEO of MyHealth Access Network, a statewide health information exchange, said the number of ICU admissions in younger people was unprecedented in this surge, compared with other points in the pandemic.
In the winter surge, people 65 and older made up the largest share of ICU admissions, he said.
“The delta variant in particular appears to be affecting younger people more severely — so severely they wind up in the ICU,” he said.
Kendrick said younger people tend to be able to survive “heroic measures” longer, like being on a ventilator or an ECMO machine, which pumps blood outside the body to remove carbon dioxide and add oxygen when a patient’s organs can’t do it for them.
That means younger patients tend to stay in the hospital longer.
New ICU admissions are beginning to trend down, according to a presentation Kendrick gave at the coalition’s news conference Tuesday.
But that may be because space to admit new ICU patients is scarce, said Dr. Mary Clarke, president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association.
“If you have ICU beds that are full, and your regular … beds are full, your admission numbers are actually going to look better, because there’s no place to admit anyone,” Clarke said.
In Stillwater, where Clarke practices, two patients were being held in the hospital’s emergency room waiting for an ICU bed to open up so they could be admitted, she said Tuesday.
“No room means no admission,” she said.
In the latest hospital capacity update from Integris, SSM Health, Mercy and OU Health, only Integris reported having any ICU beds available: three across its hospitals.
The other three health systems said they had no ICU beds available, including at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital.
“The system is stressed, and there are people who are suffering because the system is overstressed,” said Gary Raskob, dean of the University of Oklahoma’s College of Public Health. “If we pull together and use masks, and if we would up the vaccination rate, it would greatly alleviate this issue.”