After a few days of declines, the number of active COVID-19 patients being treated at The University of Kansas Health System is back up today. 94 people with the active virus are hospitalized, up from 82 yesterday. 52 patients are in the ICU, up from 47 yesterday. 25 of those ICU patients are on ventilators today, down from 28 yesterday. 62 other patients are still hospitalized because of COVID-19 but are out of the acute infection phase, up from 59 yesterday. That’s a total of 156 patients, up from 141 yesterday. In addition, HaysMed has a total of 28 COVID-19 inpatients, up from 25 yesterday, with 24 of those active patients and 4 in the recovery phase.
Doctors call this a significant jump in numbers, with admissions outnumbering discharges. They say it mirrors the increased number of post-Thanksgiving tests and the percent of positivity remains pretty high.
Joining the Morning Media Update today, Dr. Gregory Poland, a physician-scientist and the founding and current director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group. He is editor-in-chief for the journal Vaccine and past president of the Defense Health Board. His work focuses on understanding the genetic drivers of viral vaccine response toward greater immunity as well as the development of novel vaccines against emerging public health threats. He, along with Dana Hawkinson, MD, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control at The University of Kansas Health System and Steve Stites, MD, chief medical officer at the health system, discussed the current vaccine situation and answered media and community questions.
Dr. Poland joined from the Mayo Clinic in Florida, and said the Sunshine State has a cultural problem, much like Kansas and Missouri, where they can’t get people to follow the “hands, face and space” recommendations, and they’re paying the price for it. He calls it “irrational, frankly.” He says the Pfizer vaccine has met the success criteria and says there’s no chance the vaccine will not receive emergency use authorization from the FDA this week. With a 95 percent effective rate, he says, “By any measure this is a home run.” He says it’s impressive the results did not vary by age, gender, race or co-morbidities. He explained both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are MRNA vaccines, and how it tricks the body into thinking it’s seeing coronavirus. He also explained the different storage and logistical requirements for each. He says it’s important that everyone get the vaccine in order to achieve some kind of herd immunity, which he described as enough people vaccinated to keep the virus from spreading. He says people will get a vaccine card, which he says is helpful for record keeping, but warns against using it for an “immunity passport” to justify not following the pillars of infection prevention. He hopes by the middle of next year, with sufficient vaccinations, things will start to get back to normal. He says there’s still no long-term data on how long the vaccine will keep you immune. He admits convincing the non-believers will be hard and says a trustworthy message from a trusted messenger is vital to gain widespread acceptance. He stressed, “I want to plead with people to please not to be misled by people who are not scientists and seek to sway you for their political or religious or economic ideologies.” He added, “This is a viral infection. It is killing Americans and harming many millions more. The inconvenience of wearing a mask is nothing compared to the preciousness of your health and the health of those around you. So please, please wear a mask.”
Dr. Stites says right now, faith, hope and science are together. He says when those three are together, they can deliver us from a crisis that is killing 1 in 700 Americans. He stresses that if we follow the pillars of infection prevention, we can bend the curve again.
Tuesday, December 8 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Media Update. The regional health administrator for the U.S. Department of health and Human Services Dr. Catherine Satterwhite, her husband and critical care physician Lewis Satterwhite and psychologist Dr. Danielle Johnson join to share what they know about vaccine distribution, how medical staff on the ICU COVID-19 floors feel about a vaccine and what needs to happen and be said to get those most hurt by COVID-19 access to the vaccination.
ATTENTION: media procedure for calling in:
The meeting is available by Zoom, both video and by phone. To join the Zoom Meeting by video, click https://kumc-ois.zoom.us/j/7828978628
Telephone dial-in Participants:
For those without Zoom, call 1-253-215-8782, meeting ID: 782 897 8628.
The feed is also available via TVU grid. The TVU source is UoK_Health and is being made available to all.
Feel free to send questions in advance to medicalnewsnetwork@kumc.edu.