Clockwise from top: YNHH Spokesperson Vin Petrini; CEO Marna Borgstrom; Chief Clinical Officer Tom Balcezak.
Covid-19 hospitalizations have doubled across the Yale New Haven Health System over the past two weeks, hospital officials reported on Tuesday afternoon.
They also expressed optimism about prospective vaccines that might start to get distributed as early as mid-December.
The number of Covid-19 inpatients across the health system’s seven Connecticut and Rhode Island hospitals now totals 420, up from 210 two weeks earlier.
In New Haven, Yale New Haven Hospital is currently treating 217 inpatients, up from 125.
The hospital system is also treating 124 patients in Bridgeport; 28 in Greenwich; 34 at Lawrence + Memorial; and 14 at Westerly in Rhode Island.
These numbers match the hospitalization levels in late March, said Chief Clinical Officer Tom Balcezak.
The hospital has continued to see a lower mortality rate compared to the spring, Balcezak said, partly because doctors have learned more about how to effectively treat the virus in the past several months. Doctors are making use of high-flow oxygen therapy and steroids, he said. They’re relying less on intubation.
According to spokesperson Vin Petrini, Yale New Haven Hospital’s intensive care unit was filled to 80 percent of its capacity on Tuesday, with 171 of the unit’s 212 beds occupied. A total of 89 patients are on ventilators, 57 of whom have Covid-19. The New Haven hospital has 199 ventilators.
While fewer patients are intubated in the intensive care unit than in the spring, “the reality is that these are really sick people,” Balcezak said of the inpatient population. The stakes of the virus remain high. He said that the wave of Covid-19 cases has put a strain on already-fatigued hospital staff, who are now at a higher risk because of the influx of patients.
CEO Marna Borgstrom said one of her top concerns at the moment is a possible staff shortage if many more healthcare workers contract the virus. In the spring, when the pandemic was concentrated in the Northeast, many hospitals in the region received staffing help from other parts of the country to handle the virus’ peak. Now that the virus has reached new peaks throughout the country, traveling nurses and other healthcare workers are needed everywhere.
“Effectively, there isn’t a way to supplement our staff,” Borgstrom said.
Amid the grim report, the health system leaders did share a significant source of hope: the set of potential vaccines that have recently shown promising results in clinical trials. One trial of a vaccine produced by Pfizer has been based at Yale New Haven Hospital.
The Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines, Balcezak said, “are very close, I believe, to being able to seek and receive FDA approval for emergency use.”
“We are preparing to deliver that vaccine,” he added. “By the middle of December, we will be well along in our way of vaccinating our healthcare workers and some of our high-risk populations.”
As Balcezak has stressed in the past, mask-wearing and social distancing will still need to be a part of daily life well after the vaccine’s approval. The approved vaccines will have to be fully administered to 80 percent of the population in order to reach the “community immunity” necessary to relax infection control measures, Balcezak said.
People who have already been infected with Covid-19, and who may have antibodies, won’t necessarily count towards that 80 percent, he said. “There are diseases where natural immunity is stronger than getting the vaccine, and there are diseases where natural immunity is weaker than getting the vaccine,” Balcezak said. With Covid-19, a lot about natural immunity remains unknown.
Of those who have expressed reservations about taking the vaccine once it is adopted, Balcezak said, “That nonsense needs to stop.”
“I am going to get a vaccine as soon as I’m offered one,” he said. “I believe that all three vaccines are safe.”