States Are Running Out of Doctors and Nurses as COVID-19 Surgeshttps://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/states-are-running-out-of-doctors-and-nurses-as-covid-19-surges/It’s not just beds and medical supplies—hospitals in multiple states are running low on doctors and nurses to tend to the deluge of COVID-19 patients.Military medical personnel arrived in Los Angeles County Friday to reinforce staffing at two area hospitals struggling amid the pandemic, according to a report in the
Los Angeles Times. The Department of Defense deployed the Air Force medical teams after state officials put in a request through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-27/military-medical-teams-arrive-in-two-los-angeles-county-hospitalsThe Times noted that six other hospitals in the state have already received military back-up in their fight against the novel coronavirus.
Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, told the Times that the additional medical personnel is “basically to provide surge staffing to hospitals in need.” He noted that the struggling hospitals are facing surges in patients and also may be short-staffed, potentially because staff have, themselves, become infected with the pandemic coronavirus.
Further, the two Los Angeles County hospitals receiving military staff wrote in a statement that they will use the personnel “to support operation of hospital critical care units amidst growing COVID-19 hospitalizations.”
Several other states may soon be in similar situations. Arizona and Texas are projected to face shortages of doctors who work in intensive care units next month, according to a recent report by researchers at George Washington University.
Researchers estimate that more than 100 percent of the states’ intensive care doctors will be needed to care for COVID-19 patients alone in August.Eleven other states are facing staffing strain, the researchers also reported. That means more than 50 percent of the states’ intensive care doctors may be required to support COVID-19 patients in the coming months.https://www.gwhwi.org/uploads/4/3/3/5/43358451/about_the_estimator_07.23.20.pdf“The news media [have] largely focused on hospitalizations and the danger of depleting the ICU bed supply, but staffing these beds may be an even greater problem,” the researchers write in the report. “New beds can be set up in other hospital units, or even outside the hospital setting, but it takes time to find highly specialized ICU professionals.”-----------------------------------
'The Hotspot of a Hotspot of a Hotspot': Coronavirus Takes Heavy Toll In South Texashttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/29/texas-hidalgo-county-border-mexico-coronavirusSeventy-two death notices sprawled across an entire page of the Monitor newspaper in Hidalgo county recently.The small-print entries, stacked in five tidy columns, didn’t mention Covid-19. But 27 residents of the south Texas community had died from the virus that day, 22 the day before, and 35 the day before that.
That was earlier this month, but things have worsened since.
... At Kreidler’s funeral home, corpses wrapped in sheets, then double-bagged and wrapped again lay across tables in the preparation room because there’s no space left in the cooler. The crematory is fully booked up to 10 days in advance.
Already, 467 members of the community have died from Covid-19, according to the county, most of them since Texas reopened in May. But the state government has actively thwarted efforts to go back into lockdown, prioritizing economic vitality even as the death toll skyrockets.
... In a matter of weeks, Ivan Melendez, Hidalgo county’s health authority and a practicing clinician, has put his sixth-grade teacher on life support, opened up a body bag to play a son’s farewell video for a patient who had already died, and stumbled upon a gravely ill nurse he’d known for 30 years, whom he didn’t even recognize at first glance. Harrowing personal moments abound, as do thorny gray areas.
“There’s a moral, ethical dilemma at every place that we turn,” he said.
Melendez recalled recently encountering a critically ill patient with an alarmingly low pulse. He tried to warn someone, but nurses informed him that a different doctor had already decided not to intervene because they “didn’t expect for [the patient] to survive”.... Hospital emergency departments are struggling to cope, so other wings have morphed into Covid units – even when they aren’t equipped to do so. One health care worker at DHR Health in Edinburg, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described patients in hallways, two people to a room and “everything askew at all times” in a rehabilitation facility that has been converted amid the health emergency.
The building isn’t made to provide so much life-sustaining oxygen, they said, and one time, it simply shut off.-----------------------------------
Inside A Rio Grande Hospital With No ICU During A COVID-19 Outbreakhttps://www.keranews.org/post/inside-rio-grande-hospital-no-icu-during-covid-19-outbreakDoctors at Starr County Memorial, a small hospital three miles from the border, recently gave us a sense of what it's like inside.
... Carlos Paris is one of three physicians on duty at Starr County Memorial, and he worked on his day off.
All 48 beds there were full. Most of the patients had COVID-19 and were very sick.
"They are all complicated. They are all ICU level patients," Dr. Paris said.
This is a problem because the small county hospital in the Rio Grande Valley doesn't have an Intensive Care Unit. They don't have up-to-date ventilators or negative pressure rooms where airborne organisms are filtered out.
"The first day I rounded at Starr was about a month ago. I logged on from my computer and it was like a war zone," ... "It was literally a scene of a movie. I logged on, and every single person was running around. These patients were showing up sick, and then just acutely turning the corner and becoming even worse."
"Last week they had somebody they had to transfer to New Mexico because there were no hospital beds available on the I-35 corridor from San Antonio to Dallas. They're so backed up," Ghosh said. "It just highlights what kind of a dearth we have for actual resources in terms of ICU care and ICU beds."
Vazquez said the lack of resources also includes basic medical necessities. He said five patients at Starr are waiting to be discharged, but they are stuck at the hospital because they can't get the oxygen they need for their homes.
"You know, when you live in America an oxygen tank or an oxygen concentrator should not be the reason why a patient is not discharged, when you are needing those beds for somebody sicker than you," Vazquez said.
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Trump Heads to Texas for Fundraiser as Coronavirus Toll Surgeshttps://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-trump-texas-20200729-jeieavasyjaaljin34hurvlf2u-story.htmlThere’s gold in them there Texas oil fields for President Trump, even as COVID-19 levels continue to swell and the aftermath of a nasty hurricane to worry about.
Trump is set to fly to west Texas for a $100,000-a-person fundraiser Wednesday as the GOP faces its most difficult election in decades in the traditionally reliable red state.
[...
maybe he can catch a round of golf]
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Mounting Poisonings, Blindness, Deaths as Toxic Hand Sanitizers Flood Markethttps://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/mounting-poisonings-blindness-deaths-as-toxic-hand-sanitizers-flood-market/The Food and Drug Administration is renewing warnings this week of dangerous hand sanitizers as it continues to find products that contain toxic methanol—a poisonous alcohol that can cause systemic effects, blindness, and death.
The agency’s growing “do-not-use list” of dangerous sanitizers now includes 87 products. And with the mounting tally, the FDA also says there are rising reports from state health departments and poison control centers of injuries and deaths.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-updates-hand-sanitizers-methanolThe agency reported that its ongoing testing has found sanitizers containing methanol at levels ranging from 1 percent to 80 percent. No amount of methanol is acceptable, the agency notes. The alcohol, which is metabolized to formaldehyde then to formic acid in the body, can cause systemic toxic effects if ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. Ingesting just two tablespoons can be fatal to small children, who may be tempted to drink sanitizers within reach. Smaller amounts can lead to permanent blindness.
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