By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Hospital care and capacities in the region have reached their limit as the Delta variant spreads like wildfire. So said Clallam County Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry at Friday morning’s Covid-19 briefing.
“Right now, what we are seeing, critical strains on our hospital capacity. Olympic Medical Center is full. The beds are full, the ICU is full, and we are boarding people in the. ER. We don’t have room for more patients. Forks is also experiencing significant strain. The Kitsap hospitals are full. King County ICUs are 98% full. Pierce County’s ICUs are 99% full. There is nowhere to send people when they are very, very ill. This is the critical fear that we talked about throughout the covid-19 pandemic, and we are here now.”
Dr. Berry says it’s not just that they’re running out of places to put sick people, it’s that everyone is short on staff as well.
“There is a common misconception that that is caused by the vaccine mandate. It’s actually not the mandate. The mandate hasn’t quite kicked in yet. The shortage of staff that we are seeing is driven primarily by, our health care workers are exhausted. They’ve been fighting this pandemic for a year and a half and some of them are stepping back. And we are also seeing, certainly, some cases of healthcare workers getting Covid, which pulls them out of service as well.”
Our case rate per hundred thousand leapt to 679 at the time of this morning’s briefing and confirmed cases grew to over 2500.
Berry says we are seeing 75-85 new cases per day, but the actual number is likely several times that. She believes that at least 10% of Clallam County’s population is or has been positive with Covid-19 in the last 2 weeks.
Dr. Berry made it clear that she is prioritizing the hospital crisis and getting schools open safely over other concerns, and is seriously considering reintroducing some restrictions on businesses if necessary.
“We’ve never tried to open schools with this many cases. What is important to me is that we prioritize schools over other things. I think we’ve seen the damage that was done to kids last year. We’ve seen the damage that was done the family’s last year by keeping schools closed. And so it is very important to me that we open them. I don’t like closing things, but I think it was wrong of us to close schools and leave the bars open, for example.”