MISSION, Kan. (AP) – When COVID-19 patients flooded St. Louis hospitals, respiratory therapists arriving for another grueling shift with diminishing supplies of ventilators often watched their assignments and cried as they went into the locker room to gather themselves.
“They were like, ‘Man, another 12 hours of this slogging of these dying patients who could go any minute.’ And just knowing they had to take care of them with that kind of stress in mind, ” recalls Joe Kowalczyk, a respiratory therapist who sometimes works in a supervisory role.
Now, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has dropped by 80,000 in six weeks and 17% of the country’s adult population has received at least one dose of a vaccine, providing relief to frontline workers like Kowalczyk. During his most recent shift at Mercy Hospital St. Louis, there were only about 20 coronavirus patients, compared to a whopping 100 at the height of the winter wave.
“It’s so weird to look back on it,” he said. “Everyone was at the end, especially towards the end, just because we were doing it at the end of the year for so long.”
The US has seen a dramatic turnaround since December and January, when hospitals were swarming with patients after holiday meetings and pandemic fatigue caused an increase in cases and deaths. Health officials acknowledge the improvement, but point out that hospital admissions are still roughly on par with previous peaks in April and July and just before the crisis worsened in November. The death rate is still persistently high, although much lower than the peak in early January, when it sometimes exceeded 4,000 a day.
Hospital admissions in Missouri hovered around 3,000 per day for a period from late November to January, but have fallen by about 60% since then. According to state data, 1,202 people were hospitalized as of Monday.
According to the Wisconsin Hospital Association, the number of hospital admissions in Wisconsin has dropped dramatically over the past three and a half months, from 2,277 patients on Nov. 17 to 355 on Wednesday. And the patients who are hospitalized are not that sick. The number of patients in intensive care has decreased by 81% since November 16.
State health officials removed all personnel from a field hospital set up in the October fairgrounds in suburban Milwaukee on Feb. 15. They have stopped decommissioning the facility out of concern that the state could experience an increase in cases caused by variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.
‘It’s a balancing act. You don’t want to close it too soon until you really believe we’re on the other side of this pandemic, but we don’t want to tie (the fairground) too long when we really don’t need the facility, ”said Deputy Secretary Julie Willems of Embankment of the State Department of Health Services.
Behind the overall positive trends in hospital admissions is worrying evidence that the worst may not be over, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metric sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“Over the past week we have seen the slowdown in the decline,” said Mokdad. In many states, hospital admissions are leveling off or even increasing.
The biggest cause of the overall drop in US hospital admissions is people’s behavior in December and January, Mokdad said. For the first time in the US, the shape of the wave is symmetrical, with the fall as steep as the rise.
“This has never happened in the previous two waves,” said Mokdad. “For us, in the industry, it’s like ‘Wow, we’re doing something really good right now.’ ”
In Minnesota, hospital admissions for non-intensive care units dropped from about 1,400 at the end of November to just 233 as of Tuesday. According to state data, the number of intensive care patients has fallen by about 85% since early December to just 59 patients on Tuesday.
Hospital admissions in Illinois hovered around 6,000 patients for several days at the end of November, but dropped to 1,488 on Monday, a drop of about 75%. The number of patients in intensive care has also fallen, from 1,224 on Nov. 25 to just 361 on Monday, the state health department said.
In badly affected California, hospital admissions have fallen as much as 70% since January, from 22,821 patients on January 5 to 6,764 on Tuesday. According to state data, the number of patients in intensive care has fallen from 4,971 on Jan. 10 to 1,842 on Tuesday.
In Kansas, where many rural hospitals do not have ventilation equipment, the situation was so dire at one point that patients were flown hundreds of miles for treatment.
But hospital admissions in the state are down nearly 84%, from 1,282 on Dec. 2 to 208 on Sunday, according to the state health department. In December, more than 300 people were in intensive care; there are now only 50, according to state data.
“It’s just been a bit quiet here with COVID,” said physician assistant Ben Kimball, who works primarily at Graham County Hospital in Hill City, a town of about 1,500 in rural northwest Kansas.
At the height of the wave, he once resorted to flying a patient to a Denver hospital about 252 miles away. All the closer hospitals capable of providing more advanced care were full and patients turned away.
“We’re very lucky, I think,” he said. “I certainly feel that things are getting better. We don’t constantly struggle for bed space. We’ve had a few nighttime observation COVID patients, but we haven’t sent anyone out for a while. “
Kris Mathews, the administrator of Decatur Health, a small hospital in northwestern Kansas, also spent hours on the phone arranging transfers for patients at the height of the peak. His staff got sick themselves, and those who worked well cared for coronavirus patients.
“I could feel the fatigue and fatigue of the staff,” he wrote. “Nobody complained about it, but I could see and feel them burning up.”
It has now been weeks since the hospital provided a coronavirus admission. Thinking back, he said, “I can’t be damn proud anymore.”
Richmond reported from Madison, Wisconsin. AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson in Washington State also contributed to this report.