Hospitals, nursing homes struggle as COVID-19 Delta variant cases soar

State health officials painted a bleak picture of a worsening situation in hospitals as Alaska COVID-19 infections soar. The wave is being fueled in the highly virulent Delt variant of the virus.

“We’ve seen 631 new cases in the past day,” from Aug. 18 to Aug.19, said Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer.

“That’s a 43 percent increase from last week,” in the rate of daily infections, she said in a briefing for reporters last Thursday.

Hospitals and critical care units are near or at capacity, “and in some cases beyond capacity,” Zink said. That’s dangerous because there may not be hospital beds or staff to deal with non-COVID emergencies like heart attacks and automobile accidents.

Jared Kosin, executive director of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association, is equally pessimistic.

“We are stressed, there is no relief in sight for the foreseeable future, and COVID cases and hospitalization trends from the Delta variant are not in our favor,” he said.

Nursing homes are also struggling “to maintain adequate staffing levels and some are closed to accepting any placements from hospitals,” Kosin said.

“That means precious hospital beds are occupied by patients no longer needing hospital services and cannot be used for immediate admissions,” he said.

Other states are experiencing the same pressures. “Washington State hospitals are struggling to keep up with record hospitalizations, and Oregon is standing up field hospitals. This means transfer options (for COVID patients) outside of Alaska are extremely limited, if not closed,” Kosin said.

As of Monday, Aug 16, Alaska reported 129 COVID hospitalizations. “This is up 23 percent from the beginning of August and 122 percent from one month ago. This puts us just 22 hospitalizations shy of our December COVID-19 hospitalization peak,” he said.

“As of this week, 15 percent of hospitalized adults have a COVID-19 diagnosis. This is more than double the levels we saw one month ago,” Kosin said.

Anchorage hospitals continue to run above 90 percent occupancy levels in their adult inpatient beds and intensive care units. This is putting a severe strain on nurses and other staff. Managing it is “a truly incredible feat, especially considering our frontline staff has been operating like this for a year and a half,” Kosin said.

On average, there have only been 5 ICU beds available in Anchorage per day in August, but this is an average. There are times when there have been no ICU beds. Nearly 30 percent of Anchorage ICU patients have COVID-19, Kosin said.

What does this all mean? “Hospitals are designed to run full, but they are not designed to run in a heightened ‘disaster mode. for over a year and a half. This is not sustainable,” Kosin said.

“From our perspective, there is one path forward: Alaskans need to get vaccinated, and now,” he said.

State Department of Health and Social Services data shows that just over half of Alaskans are fully vaccinated for COVID-19, meaning they have received two shots. The percentage vaccinated is much lower in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, just under 40 percent.

The level of vaccination needed to slow and stop “community spread” of the virus is estimated at 70 percent. Some Alaska communities, like Juneau and some villages in Southwest Alaska, have achieved this level or higher.

Dr. Joe McLaughlin, the state epidemiologist, said in the Thursday briefing that the available vaccines, which are free, offer strong protection even against the Delta variant and sharply reduce serious illnesses from the disease that require hospitalization and cause death.

However, there is new evidence that the effectiveness of the vaccines in preventing infections is going down, McLaughlin said, although the effectiveness in preventing serious illness requiring hospitalization has not changed.

From May through July the vaccines were found to be over 90 percent effective in stopping infections, but from July on the effectiveness seems to have dropped to about 79 percent, McLaughlin said.

Zink said the U.S Center for Disease Control and Prevention has found evidence that the immunities given by the vaccines have waning effectiveness, and the agency is now recommending a booster, or third shot, after eight months of receiving the second dose.

Booster shots are now recommended for people with compromised immune systems, like cancer patients, Zink said. After September the booster shots are recommended for everyone after the eight months of having received the second shot.

Reporters asked McLaughlin what will happen if the resistance to vaccines continues. In that case, “recovery will just take longer. There will be more infections and hospitalizations and it will go on, for months and months,” he said.