Doctors reported a slight drop in the number of active COVID-19 patients being treated at The University of Kansas Health System today. 66 people with the active virus are hospitalized, down from 71 on Friday. 23 patients are in the ICU, same as Friday. 14 of those ICU patients are on ventilators today, down from 15 Friday. 56 other patients are still hospitalized because of COVID-19 but are out of the acute infection phase, down from 70 on Friday. That’s a total of 122 patients, down from 141 on Friday. In addition, HaysMed has a total of 24 COVID-19 inpatients, up from 22 Friday, with 20 of those active patients and 4 in the recovery phase.
On today’s Morning Media Update, David Wild, MD, VP of Performance Improvement at The University of Kansas Health System, sat in for Dr. Stites. He and Dana Hawkinson, MD, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, welcomed Dr. Branden Comfort, Internal Medicine, who joined to talk about long haulers and the COVID-19 Clinic. Casey Pickering, ICU nurse manager joined to talk about life in the ICU for COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Comfort described the new Long Haul clinic, which is not a physical stand-alone facility, but an integrated approach to coordinating referrals to key specialists for recovering COVID-19 patients. The specialties include pulmonary, cardiology, neurology, psychology, rehab, social work and physical medicine. He says they are seeing many patients who are suffering from chronic COVID-19 symptoms. The criteria for patients is having symptoms for more than 12 weeks. Those symptoms include debilitating fatigue, the kind that keeps you from doing your daily activities, shortness of breath, chest pain, lung burn, joint pain, brain fog, depression and anxiety. The patients are all ages and symptoms are across the board from mild to severe. The clinic will follow patients for as long as needed and is unique to the Metro area. For now, the clinic is only open to established patients of the health system with a referral from their primary care doctor, but it’s expected to eventually open to the general public. He says the health system will communicate with current patients when it’s time to be vaccinated.
Casey Pickering helped set up the first critical care triage area for COVID-19 patients back in March and says none of them thought we’d all still be doing this nearly a year later. Pickering says COVID-19 patients tend to be in the ICU longer. One patient was in for 210 days, with many there for weeks and weeks. The staff get to know them and their families and they’ve helped celebrate birthdays in the unit. It’s more difficult with the lack of family, and they say it’s especially hard having to deal remotely with families for end of life issues. Pickering says many of the staff feel defeated when they’re doing everything right and it still doesn’t help, especially when they are used to having more positive outcomes with traditional ICU patients. This could lead to some post-traumatic stress when the pandemic is over. The best advice Pickering has is if you know a healthcare provider, keep checking on them and see how they’re doing because it makes a difference.
Dana. Hawkinson, MD, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control at The University of Kansas Health System, was skeptical of a media report claiming the vaccine is only effective for 90 days saying it’s expected to be effective for much longer. He also says taking Tylenol for injection site pain after a COVID-19 vaccination will not affect the immune response. He also commented on media reports the incoming Biden administration wants to release all of the vaccine doses at once rather than hold them back for second doses. He says while the theory is to get more people vaccinated quicker, the risk is people won’t achieve full protection without the second dose.
Dr. Wild said the main concern about the new variants of the virus is they are more transmissible, but stressed they are not more deadly, and the current vaccines are expected to protect from them. He doesn’t know when the next phase of vaccinations will begin in Kansas but says it could be in the spring. He says because of careful planning the health system is not experiencing oxygen shortages being reported elsewhere. He also reminds us that the vast majority of virus spread is from droplets in the air and not from surfaces. He says there is a focus on vaccines as the light at the end of the tunnel, but warns because of the thousands of new cases in the last several days, it feels like we’re staring at the light of a train coming at us if we don’t get this under control again. We can get through this together, he says, by constantly remembering the pillars of infection prevention.
Tuesday, January 11 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Media Update. KDHE Secretary Dr. Lee Norman joins to answer questions about vaccines. He will join every Tuesday in January, but his time is limited. So, we will get to questions right off the top. Then, Dr. Mario Castro returns with news of two new trials involving monoclonal antibody therapy. He's enrolling patients and will share the criteria.
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