What hospitals in the US Covid-19 hotspots look like now

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“I remember seeing articles in the news about hospitals in California with empty Covid units, and I was really looking forward to that experience,” said Segara, chief medical officer of Baptist Health Baptist Hospital. “It’s an experience we’ve been working our way up to that, unfortunately, has taken a sad turn.”

In the weeks since, the hospital’s Covid-19 patient count has more than tripled, and staff are now treating more than 70 people, an “exponential growth” they didn’t expect. To accommodate the increasing patient numbers, the hospital recently reopened two previously closed units.

Segara said the vast majority of patients with Covid are not immunized. Many of them are young – people in their twenties and thirties who get “very, very sick” and some of them die.

“It is very sad to see a healthcare professional, to see this is a generally preventable and preventable disease and to see so many people dying from a preventable disease,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

With virus cases rising across much of the United States — driven by unvaccinated Americans and fed by a highly contagious Delta variant — Covid-19 hospitalizations are surging in other parts of the country as well, and hospitals are once again preparing for another round of devastation. And in Covid hot spots like Florida and Missouri, where patients are rapidly filling up Covid units, experts are warning that a spike in deaths may soon occur.

Younger, healthier patients are treated

At Texas Memorial County Hospital in Houston, Missouri, hospital leaders say half of the Covid-19 deaths they’ve seen since the beginning of this year — eight in total — have occurred over the past week.

More than 23% of county residents have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to hospital spokesperson Helania Wolf. Wolf said the county, which is now classified as a “very high” risk, has seen the rate of positivity testing rise from 9.5% last week to more than 30% this week.

While patients during previous surges tended to be older and had pre-existing conditions, patients are now younger and healthier — but they are getting sick and getting worse more quickly, said Lauren Toman, director of respiratory care at the hospital.

“It regresses very quickly, very quickly, and then even after intubation, we’ll see it regress very quickly, and unfortunately we see people go through faster than before,” Toman told CNN.

Toman said not all patients she has worked with in recent weeks have been vaccinated.

An hour and a half away, Eric Frederick, chief administrative officer at Mercy Springfield Hospital, told CNN they were seeing patient numbers accelerate “at an almost unbelievable pace.”

The hospital went from 26 Covid-19 patients on June 1 to more than 130 on Saturday – higher than ever, including the winter increase.

“Last year, it took us from September 1 to our peak, December 28, to go from 24 to 113 (patients),” Frederick said. “We got over that this year in 39 days.”

He said there was a “straight line” between low vaccination rates in the community and high cases and hospitalizations. Nearly 40% of Missouri residents have fully received their vaccinations, according to state data, Frederick said, and some of the counties the hospital serves have yet to reach the 20% level.

The patients there were also heading younger. He said nearly 91% of patients in the intensive care unit are on ventilators, and among them are young patients, in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

As Missouri is rapidly emerging as a new hot spot for Covid, health leaders in other parts of the United States are reporting similar patterns. Dr. Jeffrey Chapman, chief medical officer at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center in Wyoming, says the increase in hospitalized Covid-19 patients includes a young population that is significantly unvaccinated and is “declining” faster.

In Mississippi, where less than 34% of the population is fully vaccinated, the state’s top health official warned that the delta-changing mutation resulted in seven children being treated for Covid in the state’s intensive care units — including two on ventilators.

Nearly all of the cases in the state are Delta-type, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a Mississippi health official, said on Twitter, adding that the “vast majority” of cases, hospitalizations and deaths were among unvaccinated Americans.

An increased risk for vaccinated Americans, too

In Kansas, the University of Kansas Health System has been on record for several days with only two or three Covid-19 patients returning in late May. Now, he treats more than thirty patients, according to Dr. Stephen Stites, chief medical officer.

He explained that more than 80% of the new patients are not immunized, although others have been vaccinated.

“When you look at these patients, what you see is that they are all chronically ill,” he said. “A vaccination is not exactly a ‘get out of jail free’ card. It makes things a lot better, but it doesn’t make it go away.”

Experts say that while vaccines are highly effective, they’re not perfect — and fully vaccinated Americans still have to consider transmission levels and the type of environment they’ll be in when deciding whether to wear a mask. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said people who are immunocompromised or those with chronic illnesses should consult their doctors before removing their masks.

“I’m a little nervous about the open society and people thinking everything is normal when it’s not, and especially when you have a chronic disease you still need to wear your mask,” Stets said.

In Mississippi, Dobbs said on Twitter that 7% of Covid-19 deaths in the state were in people who had been vaccinated, calling that number “alarming.”

“We are allowing many of the deltas in circulation to reach the most vulnerable,” he wrote.

“The only way we can stop this monster.”

Hospital leaders say the recent surge in patients comes as staff feel exhausted and traumatized by a battle with the virus that has now lasted more than a year.

In Texas County, Toman said she was concerned that they would see a steady increase, fueled by the July 4th celebrations and ongoing summer gatherings, that would “overwhelm every hospital in Missouri.”

“What I’m afraid of is, can we survive again? Can we stay positive, can we all keep our spirits up?” She said. “We try so hard to be there for each other but we’re tired and scared.”

She said that while she understands some community members’ reluctance about the vaccine, raising the state’s vaccination numbers would be “the only way we’re going to stop this monster.”

Segarra, in Miami, said he agrees.

“We haven’t made the progress we would have liked in terms of curing Covid, we don’t have that magic bullet in terms of curing Covid, but boy, we came so close to getting that magic bullet to avoid it – and seeing that it wasn’t used is very disappointing.”

The country failed to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating at least 70% of American adults by Independence Day earlier this month. After more than a week, about 67.7% of adults in the United States had had at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, and about 59% had been fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.

“We are dealing with a public health situation that is beyond our personal needs, so we need to be more selfless rather than selfish,” Segara said.

“So, if you are on the fence about whether or not to get vaccinated… think about the good you will bring to your community, which you will bring to your community, because the vaccine not only prevents you from getting sick, it prevents you from passing it on to others.”

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