Oregon was once the poster child for preventing the spread of the coronavirus after its Democratic governor imposed some strict safety measures, and restrictions including mask mandates indoors and outdoors, limitation on gatherings and order of closing restaurants.
But now due to the super-transmissible delta variant, the state is being hammered and the hospitals are getting strained to the breaking point as the huge majority of hospitalized coronavirus patients are still not vaccinated.
With 19 of the 30 beds occupied last week by coronavirus patients, the intensive care unit at Salem Hospital in Oregon’s capital city is completely full among which the youngest patient is only 20 years old. It’s the same at a hospital in Roseburg, a former timber town in western Oregon.
Last week while waiting for an ICU bed to open a COVID-19 patient died in its emergency room and it is such an event that was deeply distressing to the medical staff.
The staff of CHI Health Medical Center said on Facebook “We need your help, grace and kindness.” They are reeling “from the extraordinary onslaught of new cases and hospitalizations.” Oregon is among a handful of states, including Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, that have more people hospitalized with coronavirus than ever before.
Chief physician executive for St. Charles Health System in Bend, Jeff Absalon said, “This is really a dire situation.”
However, last week National Guard troops were deployed to the mountain town’s to assist medical workers.
Around 1,500 guard troops have been shipped to hospitals around the state by Gov. Kate Brown, who warned of the “seriousness of this crisis for all Oregonians, especially those needing emergency and intensive care.”
The number of hospitalized patients in Oregon keeps on breaking records, like the cases reached 937 on Monday which is a 50% surge over last year’s record, when vaccines were not yet available.
More than 90% of Oregon’s adult hospital and ICU beds are currently full. And on Monday Legacy Health, a hospital system in Portland that includes six hospitals, said it was holding all non-urgent surgical procedures for two weeks to increase bed capacity.
Lisa, a nurse in Salem Hospital’s ICU, told a small group of visiting journalists Friday that to see a record number of COVID-19 patients, she is both frustrated and sad, even though vaccines are widely available. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be used, because the pandemic and how to contest it have become highly politicized.
“We’ve been dealing with the second wave when we thought — I guess we hoped — it wouldn’t come. And it’s come. And it’s harder and worse, way worse, than before,” she said.
Hours earlier, a COVID-19 patient died in the ICU. As she spoke, a patient’s heart monitor beeped. A mechanical ventilator occasionally added a higher-pitched tone.
Fifteen of the COVID-19 patients were on ventilators. The hospital’s wellness department, which normally recommends yoga and deep breathing for relaxation, recently set up a booth and filled it with dinner plates for a different kind of stress relief. “We put on safety glasses,” Lisa said.
“And we took plates and we shattered them. And I kept going back. I kept going back, and they told me I had enough turns.”
