money Covid rips through Mississippi leaving only six free ICU beds
Mississippi health officials have said that hospitals across the southern state are struggling to keep up with the mounting Covid-19 cases as the Delta variant of the virus rips across areas with low vaccination rates.
Doctors at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) have said that they have seen an increase in people under 50 as well as children being hospitalised with the virus.
Health systems in the state are straining under the number of cases, and health officials said on Wednesday that there were only six ICU beds available in the entire state, WJTV reported.
“We are at this moment over capacity,” UMMC Covid-19 incident commander Dr LouAnn Woodward said at a press briefing. “We have been over capacity here at the medical centre most of the summer, honestly. It almost starts to feel like a new normal, but it’s not.”
Hospitals are not only lacking a sufficient number of beds but are also struggling with low numbers of staff as doctors and nurses also get infected.
The associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs and the Covid-19 clinical response leader, Dr Alan Jones, said that UMMC has had to close a unit with 15 beds, including 14 ICU beds because they didn’t have enough staff to keep it operational.
Dr Jones added that Covid-19 is spreading among staff who are already overworked and exhausted as they try to handle another surge.
“We’ve gone through this four to five times,” Dr Jones said according to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. “We’re at a breaking point.”
The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 2,821 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day case total since 15 January.
Dr Jones said that 94 people were hospitalised at UMMC with Covid-19, with 13 of them being children.
The overwhelming majority of those patients have not been vaccinated, leaving staff frustrated, exasperated, and with a “level of anger” at those still refusing to get the shots.
“It is almost impossible to put into words the frustration that we all feel, the disappointment that here we are again,” Dr Woodward said.
“There are a lot of people in health care right now that feel pretty mad about this situation and part of it is because we know more now,” she added. “Now, we have a safe and effective tool that we did not have at this time last year. We’ve got the vaccine.”
Mississippi has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US with about 35 per cent having had both shots. In multiple counties in the state, less than a third of the population has received one dose of the vaccine.
According to the CDC, nearly 50 per cent of the entire US population, more than 165 million people has been fully vaccinated. Almost 193 million people, around 58 per cent of the total population, have received at least one dose.
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