Beaufort ICU doctor still treats unvaccinated people for COVID-19: ‘It’s disheartening’
Life is returning to normal. Bars are packed, restaurants have long wait times, and Hilton Head Island is full of tourists.
But Dr. Matthew McLaughlin is still treating severely ill COVID-19 patients admitted into Beaufort Memorial Hospital’s intensive care unit.
What’s similar about his patients? They’re all unvaccinated, McLaughlin said in a Thursday interview.
He’s becoming more and more upset about the situation.
“It’s disheartening to see people still getting sick, still needing to come into the ICU, still having people on the ventilator for this,” said McLaughlin, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist who’s been on the front lines of COVID-19 for over a year.
Even as coronavirus cases drop in Beaufort County, McLaughlin wants unvaccinated residents to know that the pathogen is out there.
And it can make them extremely sick.
The vaccines are highly protective
Clinical trials and real-world studies have found that the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccines are highly protective.
Pfizer’s vaccine, for example, is 100% effective against severe COVID-19 cases, according to company data.
“Breakthrough” infections are possible among fully vaccinated people, but those are exceedingly rare and typically mild. The vaccines, researchers stress, are able to mitigate the worst effects of COVID-19.
McLaughlin is now seeing that play out in Beaufort.
Six to eight coronavirus patients have been admitted into the hospital’s ICU over the past month, McLaughlin said, and one or two people have died in recent weeks.
All of those patients were in the ICU for an average of at least two weeks.
None was fully inoculated.
McLaughlin’s observations are far from unusual. Dr. Helmut Albrecht, for example, has noted similar trends in the Midlands and Upstate.
Albrecht, medical director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at Prisma Health and the University of South Carolina, in a June 9 interview said that 199 of the last 200 coronavirus patients admitted at Prisma Health facilities were unvaccinated.
ICU recovery can be difficult
An ICU stay can be a traumatic experience, McLaughlin said, even for coronavirus patients who eventually survive.
Some of the hospital’s previous COVID-19 patients were on a ventilator — a mechanical breathing machine — for 40 days or more, McLaughlin said.
“They get a tracheostomy and then — because they’ve been on the ventilator so long, they’ve been stuck in bed for several weeks — they require intensive physical therapy,” he said.
“It is something that can change your quality of life, your function in life pretty drastically.”
‘They were pretty sick’
Roughly 54.1% of Beaufort County residents 12 or older have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
That’s higher than other counties’ rates, but the local inoculation campaign has still slowed to a crawl. Health officials face a wall of vaccine hesitancy, mistrust and opposition.
Thousands of people remain unvaccinated, yet doses are readily available around the Lowcountry, McLaughlin pointed out.
Why don’t residents roll up their sleeves for a jab?
The issue is personal for McLaughlin. Some of his colleagues who previously contracted the coronavirus got seriously ill.
“Right before the vaccine became available,” he said, “we had several different staff members admitted to the hospital. Some of them were friends, and they were pretty sick.
“I quite frankly (was) not able to sleep at night, worried that I was going to have to put a friend who’s fairly young for COVID standards, and healthy and working … on a ventilator.”
Unvaccinated residents can now avoid that same frightening scenario, McLaughlin said.
They just need to get a shot.
Note: Data in this story are current as of Friday afternoon.
