Treatment, staff shortages loom if COVID-19 hospitalizations keep rising, officials say
If the surge of coronavirus patients being admitted to South Carolina’s hospitals continues, shortages of drugs and health care workers to treat patients will follow, state political and health leaders say.
A doctor at Prisma Health, one of the state’s largest hospital systems, says physicians already are facing shortages of drugs, forcing them to make decisions about who gets treatment.
And representatives of coastal hospitals — where COVID-19 infections are surging, too — say they’re worried about exhausting their workforce.
The health care workers are sounding the alarms as state health officials do the same, predicting a dire reality if COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket in South Carolina, capturing national attention for being home to one of the world’s worst outbreaks.
This last week, the state surpassed 50,000 positively identified cases of the virus, and as of Friday, the death toll was 922.
“We must all take action,” Joan Duwve, public health director for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, said Friday during a press conference with the governor.
“I am asking you all to take action, because if we don’t ... we will see more of our friends, our family members and our loved ones become ill, become hospitalized, become ventilated and die.”
Waiting for treatment
Dr. Edwin Hayes, who works at one of Prisma Health’s hospitals in Richland County, said access to drugs to treat COVID-19 is becoming more and more of a problem.
The ever increasing number of coronavirus patients being admitted at local hospitals has spread resources thin, especially when it comes to the two most well accepted treatments for COVID-19: convalescent plasma therapy and a drug called Remdesivir.
Plasma therapy is an experimental treatment that involves infusing a coronavirus patient with plasma from a donor who tests positive for COVID-19 antibodies. According to the Mayo Clinic, the plasma may help patients with COVID-19 respond better to the virus or keep them from becoming more sick.
Remdesivir is a drug that is showing signs that it may reduce the chance of death after contracting COVID-19. Currently, the U.S. is facing a nationwide shortage of the drug.
Hayes said health officials may face a major shortage of both treatments if the number of coronavirus patients keeps increasing each day. And delays in treatment, or a complete lack of treatment, could spell death for some patients.
“The sooner you can treat people, the more likely they’ll have a good outcome,” Hayes said. “The longer you wait, the more likely there could be irrevocable damage.”
The coronavirus has exploded in South Carolina, leading it to be called out as one of the worst outbreaks in the world.
And cases are expected to continue climbing after the Fourth of July weekend, when celebrants gathered in groups, at the beach or in other tourist areas.
On June 29, the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized at once in South Carolina exceeded 1,000 for the first time, taking up about 10% of the state’s 10,700 hospital beds.
The state has seen an increase in COVID-19 patients almost every day since. On Friday, the state saw a record after state Department of Health and Environmental Control officials reported that 1,438 patients diagnosed with or suspected of having the coronavirus were hospitalized.
On Saturday, the state announced another daily record of 2,239 positive coronavirus tests reported in one day.
In all, about 13% of all confirmed coronavirus patients have been hospitalized, said DHEC spokeswoman Laura Renwick, who did not provide the total number of hospitalizations, which The State requested.
As of June 30, that meant that about 4,490 South Carolinians had been sent to the hospital after contracting the virus.
Within Prisma’s hospital system, officials have seen steady increases in the number of patients they are treating, which doubled over the last three weeks. On June 11, the system was only treating 101 COVID-19 patients, but by June 30, they were treating 204, according to Prisma spokeswoman Tammie Epps.
“To think about the numbers (of patients) getting worse than they already are … it can all be very daunting to think about those numbers coming up in the next couple of weeks,” said Hayes, the Prisma infectious disease doctor who treats COVID-19 patients.
Hospital supplies of plasma are completely dependent on how many people donate, Hayes said. This can especially lead to shortages of plasma for people with rare blood types.
It currently takes the American Red Cross an average of 36 to 48 hours to fill a hospital’s order for plasma, Red Cross spokesperson Maya Franklin said. Donors can register to donate at RedCrossBlood.org/plasma4covid.
“We only have as much treatment as people are willing to give us from the community,” Hayes said. “Some of these patients are taking days before they can get what’s potentially a life saving treatment.”
Prisma has also had to set up an ethics committee to determine which patients need Remdesivir the most. That’s because, like many hospitals across the country, Prisma only has a limited supply of the potentially life saving drug.
“We don’t know that we’re going to continue to have enough drug to meet that demand,” Hayes said. “It’s a shame. It’s really a shame that we can’t kind of give that distribution more aggressively to the general hospital population.”
Hospitals eye worker shortages
Another challenge that may come with the rising number of hospitalized patients are staffing issues, Hayes said. As the demand for health care goes up, more doctors and nurses are working extra hours and facing burn out.
Officials at the Medical University of South Carolina, an important health care provider on the coast, said their health care workers are facing the same issue.
“We have adequate space to care for patients in a safe manner, but staffing is projected to become a challenge unless the growth rate of infections decreases,” MUSC spokesperson Heather Woolwine said.
During a press conference Friday, S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster said he’s heard this issue at many hospitals across the state.
“One problem that we’re seeing is a shortage of staff people to work at the hospitals,” he said.
At Tidelands Health in the Pee Dee, officials considered calling in the National Guard to help with staffing shortages. Just their request could go beyond the help that the National Guard’s medical unit could give, S.C. Emergency Management Division spokesman Derrec Becker said during a call with reporters Thursday.
“We’re looking at the possibilities of utilizing their contracting services, and reaching out to the federal government,” Becker said. “We’re just not sure yet.”
