The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hospital cases rising
More patients in ICU, on ventilators
Hartford HealthCare, the hospital system that includes St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, Hartford Hospital and others, has seen a large bump in COVID hospitalizations over the past few weeks, Dr. Ajay Kumar, Hartford HealthCare’s chief medical officer, said Tuesday
He said hospitalizations systemwide roughly doubled between Oct. 1 and Tuesday, from 47 to 97. At Hartford Hospital alone, they went from 21 to 48 over that time and at St. Vincent’s, there was a bump from two hospitalizations to 12.
Amanda Falcone, public relations director for Middlesex Health, said the hospital has seen fairly stable numbers of CO-. VID-19 inpatient numbers over the last several weeks despite the increase experienced by hospitals in other parts of the state.
As of today Oct. 27, Middlesex Health has 17 presumed or confirmed COVID-19 patients in the hospital; 13 inpatients were waiting for COVID-19 test results, and four inpatients tested positive, Falcone
said.
“We expect that we will eventually begin to see an increase as well,” Falcone said.
COVID-19 cases have increased almost 50 percent in the last two weeks across the Yale New Haven Health System, and severe cases have spiked, according to health system officials.
“We were hopeful that we weren’t going to see the kind of uptick that we are,” said CEO Marna Borgstrom during an online press conference.
“As of this morning, across our health system, we have 90 inpatients, which is more than 31⁄
2 times the 26 patients that we had hospitalized just at the end of September,” she said.
In the Yale system, since Oct. 13, hospitalized patients increased from 64 to 92 on Monday, about 44 percent more (the number dropped to 90 Tuesday). That includes 51 at Yale New Haven Hospital, 16 at Bridgeport Hospital, 11 at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, five at Greenwich Hospital and six at Westerly Hospital in Rhode Island, Borgstrom said.
And while Dr. Thomas Balcezak, chief clinical officer, said the percentage of cases requiring intensive care is lower, Borgstrom said there are more of those seriously ill patients as well.
“A month ago we only had two COVID patients in any of our ICUs. Today we have 22 in the ICU, and eight of those patients are on [ventilators], and we went many, many, many days without any ventilated COVID-positive patients,” she said.
Mayor Justin Elicker said Monday the number of cases is accelerating in New Haven, with 200 new cases since Oct. 15 and between five and nine new cases per 100,000 residents every day. He attributed to increase to small social gatherings of families and friends.
The Yale New Haven Health System has discharged more than 4,100 patients, “but sadly we have over 600 mortalities now and, while we are seeing mortality rates decline, that’s still 606 too many people,” Borgstrom said.
“The uptick that we’re experiencing … is fully consistent with what you’re seeing across the country and it is still well below our peak last spring of 800 cases but I can tell you … it doesn’t feel very good,” she said.
“People are tired. They’re tired of the pandemic, they’re tired of social distancing, they’re tired of wearing masks. And yet, as the experts … will say, those are among the only things that we can rely on right now as we continue to try and improve treatments based on research and evidence that we know and as we try and prepare for vaccines that hopefully will be coming our way sooner rather than later.”
Gov. Ned Lamont said Tuesday the positivity rate for COVID-19 testing had jumped to 4.1 percent, the highest since June, up from a seven-day average of 2.4 percent.
Balcezak cautioned against traditional family gatherings at Thanksgiving and other holidays. “We all have families and we all have a desire to reconnect with our families and our friends, but it is not the time to be doing that,” he said.
Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, an infectious disease expert who is the lead investigator in the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation’s Pfizer vaccine trial, agreed, saying most outbreaks have been in “congregate settings.”
“There is too much community outbreak … for us to let down our guard,” Ogbuagu said.
Ogbuagu said the Pfizer trial, in which 300 people are enrolled in New Haven, is one of six Phase 3 trials of vaccines being conducted nationally and 140 worldwide. He called it “probably the most inclusive vaccine trial that’s ongoing,” because it is accepting participants 12 years old and up, immunocompromised patients, such as those with HIV and hepatitis B and C. Also, half the participants are from communities of color.
“One of the strengths that we bring to the study was the diversity in enrollment that we bring,” he said.
Of the various types of vaccines, by Norovax, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, while Yale will join in January, “it appears that Pfizer is somewhat in the lead.”
Ogbuagu said he believes an initial review of the vaccine’s efficacy may come in November and “the earliest a vaccine would receive approval would be the end of December or January 2021 at best.”
On Saturday, President Donald Trump told supporters at a rally in Wisconsin that “doctors get more money and hospitals get more money” if they say people died from COVID-19 rather than a related illness, according to boston.com.
On Tuesday, Borgstrom said, “It’s illogical if we report deaths to think that we’re going to get more money through deaths. It’s impossible to figure out why he said that, along with several other things.”
Balcezak said the health system’s has not reached its goal of 10,000 tests per day — it is conducting 3,000 — because of issues with supply chains, having to ramp up a small virology lab and having “a number of openings” for medical and lab technicians.
“For example, there’s one piece of equipment that will be able to run for us 1,000 tests per day made by one of the manufacturers that we have had on order since March,” he said.