Some COVID facts, straight from my hospital experience. We are still short staffed, but that is more a pay issue than an overcrowding issue. I am still working 60 hours a week.

We are still at higher than normal patient levels. Our admitted patients are almost all either cardiac or COVID patients. We are seeing younger patients now. The typical patient being admitted now is in their early to mid 50s.

More patients are critical and are dying than before. I am seeing an average of 2 to 3 patients die of COVID related problems each day. There were none yesterday at my hospital, but four the day before. Nearly all of the deaths are in older people, but there are a few younger ones.

The treatment for COVID that I am seeing is largely high flow oxygen, Remdesivir, Vitamins C, D, and Zinc. We got a new protocol this week: any COVID patient who is on more than 6 liters of oxygen has to be placed on continuous remote blood oxygen monitoring. We don’t have enough of those for everyone, so surgical patients, those with a DNR, and other low priority patients are having to have their blood O2 checked manually every hour instead of continuously.

Anyhow, I managed to get the weekend off, so I posting on this blog will be light. I am going to relax for the weekend.

Enjoy your labor day.

Categories: COVIDMe

13 Comments

Whoever · September 3, 2021 at 8:55 pm

Are you noticing commonalities among those 50-ish patients beyond their age (like certain comorbidities)?

    Divemedic · September 4, 2021 at 12:48 pm

    Not really. The majority aren’t even obese.

roadgeek · September 3, 2021 at 10:33 pm

How many of your patients have taken the needle? What types of problems are you seeing with those already needled?

    Divemedic · September 4, 2021 at 2:19 pm

    Roughly 30 percent of COVID patients are vaccinated. I haven’t noticed any admissions for adverse reactions to the vaccine.

tbezier · September 4, 2021 at 4:49 pm

Interesting.

Wondering how many are actual clinical viral pneumonia rather than just COVID screening test positive? WITH’s rather than FROM’s. Before March 2020 the RT/PCR was usually done after lung shadowing showed up on x-ray. Antigen / antibody test may have lower sensitivity (but not much) but dont have the low prevalence high false positive issue with RT/PCR when used as a active infection proxy test.

And how many had recent hospital / health care facility exposure? In countries which keep accurate records SARs CoV 2 like SARs CoV 1 pneumonia seems to be majority HAP. A hospital acquired infection. Not community.

Thanks

TexBob · September 4, 2021 at 5:05 pm

It’s outright medical malfeasance that so many “doctors” are denying their patients early treatment that has saved millions of lives already. HCQ and Ivermectin has squashed the ChiCom Bioweapon from Wuhan in India and Africa, but doctors here have their ass in their heads on this.

    joe · September 4, 2021 at 6:48 pm

    because orange man bad/mean tweets used it, and it’s super cheap…if they actually pushed it, the vax would be moot…no one would need it…when 95% of the people that get covid survive it…thanks for sharing the info DM, stuff the news doesn’t report…

      SiG · September 5, 2021 at 10:21 am

      Technically, it’s a bit more than just Orange Man Bad. Like 90% of what our government does lately, it’s a tale of corruption and monetary kickbacks, not just politics.

      These vaccines are still Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) only – that “FDA Approval” for the Pfizer is for a vaccine name that isn’t available yet (COMIRNATY) and won’t be for a while. Probably years. This was summed up on American Thinker.
      https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/the_fda_did_not_grant_full_approval_to_the_pfizer_shots.html

      That subterfuge is for the same reason – keep the EUA in place.

      An EUA can’t be issued if there’s an already approved drug that’s effective.

      In the first case, there couldn’t be an EUA for the vaccines if the FDA recognized that HCQ and Ivermectin were effective. The whole vaccine push goes away.

      In the second, the “FDA Approval” for Pfizer, if the new vaccine were available, they’d have to pull Moderna’s EUA, and every other experimental Covid vaccine (J&J, Astra Zeneca, whatever) that might get used. Possibly even more upsetting to all of the drug companies is their liability protection goes away.

        tfourier · September 5, 2021 at 11:16 am

        It gets even more complicated. The EUA is under the DSS Declaration of Emergency under a law which is for bioterrorism. The DSS claimed they had power under the 2012 Amending Act but when you read what was actually written into law, the new power is not there. Still has to be a BNRC agent for a lawful declaration

        The COMIRNATY “approval” is a BLA approval nothing more. Just manufacture and distribute. Which has nothing to do with 505(b)1 approval which all other vaccines had to get. Thats a 4 to 6 year approval time line.

        Your comments about therapeutics is correct. The had to be suppressed for the EUA. Now where this gets very interesting is only western countries went with mRNA / adenovirus vaccines, everyone else went with traditional attenuated virus vaccines. So the west went with vaccines types that never passed approval in the past (due to safety issues) and everyone else went with the safe vaccines.

        Now that I find interesting.

    Divemedic · September 5, 2021 at 5:10 pm

    There is a reason for that. See this earlier post:

    https://areaocho.com/hospital-update/

why · September 4, 2021 at 7:24 pm

I’m in a 250-bed hospital that only has the staffing to cover for 60-70 beds (including 18-bed ICU). I’m part of the admitting team and doing 8-12 H&Ps (history and physicals) a day (12-hr shift). I’m admitting 4-5 patients daily for COVID pneumonia with hypoxia.

Couple of things
1. Hypoxia (low oxygen) or hypoxemia (low oxygen in the blood) (we tend to shorten it to hypoxia) usually is below 94% (pulse oximeter). Prior to COVID, you’d be admitted for O2 (oxygen) sat (saturation, measured in percentage) less than 94%…….with COVID, you don’t get admitted unless your O2 sat is < mid-80s.

2. Since you won't be admitted unless your O2 sat is < 90%, we're working with home O2 suppliers to send people home with supplemental O2.

I ask on vaccination status – about 80% have NOT taken ANY vaccine.

This past week was the 1st time the patients weren't obese (defined by BMI 30 or above).

The hypoxia is usually hitting around day 7 from symptoms.

    Jonathan · September 5, 2021 at 10:05 am

    Interesting. I would guess that the absence of childhood vaccinations can make people more vulnerable to opportunistic infections?

    why · September 5, 2021 at 11:41 am

    Clarification – on ANY vaccine, I flubbed it. I meant ANY COVID vaccine.

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