Unvaccinated COVID-19 patients are filling Beaufort hospital: ‘Delta is here. It’s a beast’
Doctors and nurses at Beaufort Memorial Hospital are exhausted.
“Burnout is real,” said hospital CEO Russell Baxley. “We’re in a much more difficult situation today than we were six months ago.”
That’s because the medical center is grappling with another COVID-19 surge as the super-contagious delta variant sweeps the state.
The medical center’s 12-bed intensive care unit is full. The hospital has activated its COVID-19 surge plan. And Baxley is urging local elected officials to consider new mask mandates.
The spike in cases “feels very preventable,” Baxley said. Nowadays, about 95% of the hospital’s COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, he said.
“I don’t want the community to panic. ... I want them to feel confident that we can respond to this thing, but I also want them to understand the gravity of the situation,” Baxley told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Before delta hit South Carolina, and took advantage of the state’s low inoculation rate, Baxley said the hospital was treating two or three COVID-19 patients on a regular basis.
Those days are long gone.
Beaufort Memorial Hospital is once again on the front lines of the pandemic, even though coronavirus vaccines have been available for months.
The medical center, as of Friday morning, had 36 coronavirus patients. Seven of those people were in the ICU. “It’s really, census-wise, back to where we were (in) December and January,” Baxley said.
“There’s no more of this call to action, ‘Let’s fight the pandemic!’” he added. “It’s, ‘How can we be going through this?’”
Surge plan
Beaufort Memorial Hospital has activated the first tier of its four-stage COVID-19 surge plan, Baxley said in a Thursday interview.
What does that mean?
The ICU has been consistently full in recent days, Baxley said, so the hospital is expanding the unit’s capacity to 14 beds.
The hospital also is setting up a tent outdoors, near the emergency room, for ER patient overflow and COVID-19 testing. An average of 150 patients come to the hospital each day, for a variety of reasons, Baxley said, but that average has recently been spiking to 170 or 180 people, at times.
The tent, he said, is “really just trying to triage appropriately and keep the ER from being jammed up.” The hospital is trying to prevent long wait times inside the ER, Baxley said, and separate ER patients with a broken leg or arm, for example, from those who exhibit respiratory symptoms.
Baxley stressed that the medical center does not need a field hospital for COVID-19 patients. Such drastic measures are reserved for the end of tier three in the hospital’s surge plan.
The hospital, during tier two of the plan, would potentially send COVID-19 patients into units not typically used to treat people with acute care needs, Baxley said.
The medical center also would think about canceling some elective surgeries in tier two, the CEO said.
Local mask mandates
Elected officials should consider reimposing local mask mandates, Baxley said.
The county’s COVID-19 positivity rate has been hovering between 15 and 20% since late July, Baxley noted. That’s extremely high.
“Unfortunately, I do think we have to start talking about getting back to mask mandates,” he said. “Large public gatherings are not a good idea right now, I’ll be honest with you.
“If we continue to go down this pathway, we’re going to find ourselves in a worse situation than we are today. I know no one wants to hear ‘mask mandates’ ... but we have got to do something in order to mitigate what is going on right now.”
Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order in May that blocked local governments from using his COVID-19 state of emergency to support public mask mandates.
But his executive order was issued under his state of emergency, which expired in June to little fanfare.
That means the executive order is no longer in effect, Brian Symmes, the governor’s spokesman, previously confirmed to The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Technically, Symmes said, local governments can now attempt to issue new mask rules.
Patient trends
The vast majority of coronavirus patients being hospitalized now are unvaccinated, Baxley said.
The medical center has admitted a few fully vaccinated people with “breakthrough infections,” the CEO added. But those inoculated residents are quickly discharged, he said. They are not “lingering” in the hospital or being placed on a ventilator, which is a mechanical breathing machine.
Roughly 99 to 100% of COVID-19 patients in need of an ICU ventilator in recent days have been unvaccinated, Baxley said.
Baxley also offered a message to residents who remain skeptical that COVID-19 is a major issue.
“You don’t think it’s real, you don’t think it’s serious? You don’t think that this is a problem? Come spend a day in the life of one of our nurses or doctors. Or respiratory therapists,” Baxley said.
Beaufort County’s seven-day average of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, as of Friday, spiked to 133 infections per day, setting a new record.
‘A little too late’
One bright spot in the latest surge: Baxley said the hospital has seen an uptick in people seeking COVID-19 vaccines.
Until recently, only 40 to 50 patients were getting inoculated at the hospital’s weekly vaccine clinic, Baxley said.
On Wednesday, however, more than 300 people showed up to get a shot, Baxley said.
“It feels like it’s a little too late,” though, the CEO said. “Delta is here. It’s a beast. It is highly contagious and transmissible.”
Roughly 43.5% of Beaufort County’s population has been fully vaccinated, according to U.S. Census Bureau data and the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
K-12 school year
The S.C. Legislature recently blocked K-12 school districts from using state funds to mandate masks this fall. (Columbia’s mayor is trying to work around that ban and is imposing city-specific mask rules in schools.)
With children younger than 12 still ineligible for coronavirus vaccines, and no face-covering requirements allowed in classrooms, Baxley said he’s concerned about the coming school year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged teachers and kids 2 or older to voluntarily wear masks in schools.
‘The surge is real’
How can residents help Beaufort Memorial Hospital weather the county’s latest COVID-19 spike?
“(I’m) going to sound like a broken record,” Baxley said, “but get vaccinated, wear your mask, (practice) hand hygiene. Don’t be silly, be smart about what you’re doing. Don’t go to large social gatherings. Don’t treat signs and symptoms of COVID-19 as if it’s just the common cold. Right now, if it looks, acts and feels like COVID-19, it is probably COVID-19.
“The surge is real. ... We’re feeling it at the hospital, big time.”
This story was originally published August 14, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
