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As COVID-19 surges, there are no hospital beds for others in need of care

Tobias Lovato thought he might die. He’d spent 30 hours lying on a gurney in a small hospital near his home in Homan, New Mexico.

After being jarred awake by a pain like nothing he’d ever experienced – “it felt like my chest was going to blow up” – he'd been driven 40 minutes to Holy Cross Hospital, where he had an EKG.

The doctor told him he needed a cardiac care unit, which the hospital didn’t have.

Then, the doctor told him there were no beds. Anywhere.

“He said, ‘We cannot find a room for you. I’ve contacted all the major hospitals in New Mexico, and they’re full,’” said Lovato, 65.

Lovato is one of many Americans caught up in the omicron surge that has thrown a double whammy at the nation’s hospitals. Amid a cresting wave of COVID-19 patients who need care, hospitals face severe staffing issues because so many workers are either out sick themselves, caring for ill family members or quarantining after an exposure.

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“I would say the vast majority of people in the hospital are unvaccinated. Just about 99% in the intensive care units, and the ones that die, are unvaccinated,” said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist at Northwell Health on Long Island, New York.

Hospitals are at or past capacity, diverting ambulances and canceling procedures to keep enough open beds for patients coming in. In Kentucky, the National Guard was called out to help.

Roughly one in five hospitals reported having “critical staff shortages” in data released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services, a USA TODAY analysis found. One in four anticipated critical shortages within the next week.

President Joe Biden plans to send military surge teams of doctors, nurses and paramedics to six states to help overburdened hospitals.

New Mexico is among the states that have experienced the crush. Hours passed as Lovato remained on a gurney tucked into a corner of the Holy Cross Medical Center ER in Taos, waiting to hear from the doctor whether there was a hospital where he could go.

Tobias Lovato, 65, a rancher in Homan, N.M., had to wait 40 hours to get into a cardiac care unit in December 2021 because the omicron surge put hospital beds in short supply.
Tobias Lovato, 65, a rancher in Homan, N.M., had to wait 40 hours to get into a cardiac care unit in December 2021 because the omicron surge put hospital beds in short supply.

“He came again and said he’d contacted Colorado, Arizona and Texas, and there was nothing," he said. Lovato and his husband stared at each other, stunned. “This was life or death. My blood pressure was 195 over 125, I heard those numbers and thought, ‘I’m going to stroke out.’”

Ambulances kept arriving. Lovato could hear the radio chatter saying another COVID-19 patient was coming. As a second night fell, he thought of driving back to Homan. "I wanted to at least die at home,” he said.

After 40 hours, word came that a room had opened in Santa Fe. A helicopter took him to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. He was taken directly to the cardiac unit where an MRI showed one of his arteries was 90% blocked.

“They put a stent in on Friday, and I was home on Saturday,” he said from the cattle and horse ranch he runs with his husband, Greg.

“I don’t blame the hospitals, they were doing everything they could,” Lovato said. “But I do blame the anti-vaxxers. Even a few more vaccinated individuals could have made the difference between a bed opening up or not."

Heart-wrenching decisions

Staff shortages and rising numbers of COVID-19 patients mean Chicago cancer surgeon Ryan Merkow has to make difficult decisions about whom he can operate on and who must wait.

Every Wednesday, the oncology surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital meet to go over the coming week’s cases – and compare them with the number of post-operative beds the hospital can allot based on projected numbers of COVID-19 patients.

“Our hospital is just full of COVID patients,” he said. “Our surgical floors have been converted to COVID floors."

His patients go through chemo, fly in family members for support and are in the mindset for serious surgery.

“And then we have to pull the rug out from under them,” he said.

Last week, Merkow had to cancel 50% of his scheduled operations. “It’s devastating for them. I never thought I would have to cancel an operation simply because there wasn’t an inpatient bed.”

Registered nurse Rachel Chamberlin steps out of an isolation room where Fred Rutherford recovers from COVID-19 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H.
Registered nurse Rachel Chamberlin steps out of an isolation room where Fred Rutherford recovers from COVID-19 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H.

In Michigan, the omicron surge has hit hard, both in terms of patients and health care providers.

Dr. Rosalie Tocco-Bradley is chief clinical officer for Trinity Health Michigan. She’s also a breast cancer survivor. It’s heart-wrenching, she said, to tell patients who have cancer that their surgeries have to be delayed because the latest coronavirus crush has further pinched a short medical staff.

“You don't want to wait three months for breast cancer surgery when you know a cancer is growing in you,” she said.

Those are the conversations had at hospitals throughout the health system’s eight Michigan hospitals, where more than 900 medical workers were in isolation or quarantine last week after contracting the virus or being exposed to it. Michigan is one of the states where Biden will dispatch medical teams to help.

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The staffing crunch, exacerbated by the highly contagious omicron variant, has forced many surgical procedures to be postponed and some hospital beds to be shut down because there aren’t enough workers to staff them – even as more people flood emergency rooms seeking care.

“We may have 30 or 40 patients boarded in hallways in the emergency department,” Tocco-Bradley said.

Long lines in the ER

Clark Waggoner Sr. faced such a scene Jan. 4 when his vision went blurry and he became confused. Worried he was having a stroke, his family took him to St. John’s Hospital.

There was no space.

“He went to the ER, and the line was 40 people in front of him, just to get a bed,” said his son, Clark Waggoner Jr.

A CT scan showed he had no active bleeding, but the doctors wanted an MRI to know whether the 76-year-old was at risk for a full-blown stroke.

“Normally, they would have done it within hours, but they were just overwhelmed,” said Waggoner Jr. “It just didn't even feel safe leaving him inside, so he stayed in the car, and they brought blankets. My sister stayed in the ER to keep his place in line."

Finally, they decided to see if they could get him an outpatient MRI. On Jan. 7, he got one, and after a harrowing wait, on Monday, the family received the news they’d been hoping for.

"No sign of a clot!" his son wrote in an excited email.

Clark Waggoner Sr., 76, suffered a mini-stroke on Jan. 4 at his home in Tulsa, Okla. There was a 40-person line for the emergency room as he tried to get an MRI to determine the danger of a recurrence.
Clark Waggoner Sr., 76, suffered a mini-stroke on Jan. 4 at his home in Tulsa, Okla. There was a 40-person line for the emergency room as he tried to get an MRI to determine the danger of a recurrence.

In New Jersey, Jeffrey Rothbard has waited two months for spinal surgery to repair stenosis in seven of his disks. On Monday, he got a call.

“It had been postponed indefinitely,” he was told.

Rothbard, 71, had a laundry list of pre-op procedures done, bloodwork, a chest X-ray and EKG. He and his wife, both fully vaccinated and boosted, have been virtual hermits since Christmas Eve to make sure he didn't get infected.

His neurosurgeon told him, “You can’t put this off, otherwise you’ll end up in a walker or a wheelchair.” At his most recent appointment, the doctor stressed, “We’ve got to get this done,” Rothbard said.

Waiting patiently is not easy. He’s lost strength in his hands and had some balance issues. An avid golfer, he said, “I just want to get this over with, I want to go back to my life.”

The practicing lawyer is rescheduling court dates he moved in anticipation of the surgery and trying to stay positive.

“I’m sure the people who are in those beds need to be there a lot more than I do,” he said.

'Hard to overstate the crisis'

For Dr. Andrew Olson at M Health Fairview, a Minneapolis hospital system, staying positive is hard.

The steep rise in COVID-19 cases means the hospital is full as it struggles with having so many employees out, the medical director of COVID hospital medicine said.

“If you gave me enough staff, I would open up a tent in the parking lot today and fill it tomorrow,” he said.

That was an option during the pandemic's first wave, said Nancy Foster, vice president for patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association, but not when hospital staffers are being sent home to quarantine as omicron spreads like wildfire.

Critically ill patients on ventilators or “massive” levels of oxygen have to make do being cared for in regular hospital rooms, not in the intensive care unit, Olson said.

“We will get through this, but it’s hard to overstate the crisis we’re in,” he said.

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Having the emergency room full of COVID-19 patients means there isn’t as much space for others who need care. “If you have a 50-bed ER and 40 of those beds are taken up with patients, you now have a 10-bed ER,” he said.

Olson said his staff is committed to caring for everyone, no matter what brought them to the hospital.

“But it makes our teams feel like they’re swimming upstream when you walk into another unvaccinated person’s room and they say, ‘Well, I didn’t want to get it. I didn’t think it would happen to me.’”

Olson sighed. He's tired, and so is his staff. They take it day by day.

“Probably the highlight of the last couple of weeks was when I was in with a patient who was ambivalent about the vaccine,” he said. He had a long talk with her, and as he started to leave the room, the patient called out, “How can I get my son vaccinated?”

Grinning, he said, “I was almost skipping down the hall."

Contributing: Karen Weintraub and Mike Stucka

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hospitals overwhelmed with COVID patients lack beds for others in need