‘Busy and tired’: North Idaho reels as it surpasses previous COVID-19 peak
Hospitals and state health officials in North Idaho are straining to address a surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations that is causing a shortage of beds and has overwhelmed the region’s health department.
On Friday, the Panhandle Health District, which oversees Shoshone, Benewah, Kootenai, Bonner and Boundary counties, announced that its staff was so inundated, it has a backlog in reporting more than 1,200 COVID-19 cases beginning in late July, according to a spokesperson, Katherine Hoyer.
People who test positive are usually notified by the provider who conducted the test, but the backlog means that the actual number of cases reported each day is deflated. It also means that state officials are unable to contact patients with guidance about self-isolating and are unable to conduct proper contact tracing, Hoyer said in an email to the Statesman.
In a news release, the district’s interim director, Don Duffy, said that because his staff is “swamped,” the region reported 36 new infections on Aug. 20, when “in reality, we had over 900 cases left to process.”
To catch up with the backlog, the district is attempting to hire new staff and has temporarily reassigned some people, Hoyer said. The district plans to be caught up “in about a week,” she added.
Counties in North Idaho have low vaccination rates, and a surge in delta variant hospitalizations is threatening to force hospitals to ask the state to declare crisis standards of care, which would force health care providers to triage patients and direct resources toward those in the most dire need, possibly costing others access to much-needed care.
Kootenai Health, a health care provider based in Coeur d’Alene, announced this week that it had converted its largest classroom into a 22-patient care unit. On Aug. 25, the hospital exceeded its December peak of 91 COVID-19 patients with 96, according to a news release. Within 36 hours, four patients died, and three of them were younger than 45.
“We’re concerned that we’re still a couple weeks from our peak,” Dr. Karen Cabell, chief physician at Kootenai Health, told the Idaho Statesman in a Thursday phone interview.
As of Thursday, there were 103 patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 hospitalized in the region, according to Panhandle Health District data. On Dec. 23, the previous peak, there were 95.
The rise in hospitalizations comes as the hospital faces a severe worker shortage, with nearly 600 clinical and nonclinical job openings, according to Cabell.
She said her hospital could be days away from needing to use the makeshift classroom facility, which would accompany a request that the state activate the crisis standards. She said that provides added legal protections for caregivers and helps draw attention to the emergency.
“If we physically do not have space for patients besides that facility, we have to go ahead and occupy it,” Cabell said.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF COVID-19 SURGE
Last winter, it took around two-and-a-half months to reach the hospital’s peak number of COVID-19 patients. But this month, it took just over three weeks to top that previous high.
“Patients are getting sick much faster,” Cabell said. During an ongoing staffing shortage, patients suffering more severe problems just exacerbates the worsens the deficit, because more critical patients require greater attention.
Even prior to the surge, Cabell said her hospital was operating at 90-100% capacity every day because of a high number of patients and recent growth in population. In the Treasure Valley this summer, hospitals have spoken of a similar rise in non-COVID patients, which makes it more difficult to address the surge.
“We entered into this peak really busy and tired,” Cabell said.
The North Idaho State Fair is ongoing in Coeur d’Alene, and Cabell said she thinks a 20% uptick in positive cases at the hospital’s testing facility this week is “probably due to a lack of social distancing and masking in that area.”
On the fair’s website, it encourages fair attendees to social distance and wear masks.
Schools are also starting up again, leading to concerns about a surge in pediatric hospitalizations — as many states are seeing — as students return to classrooms without mask requirements.
“The policies that would help would be whatever the state or regional health districts can do to implement more of the basic practices that we know can reduce the spread,” Cabell said, referring to the wearing of masks, vaccinations and social distancing. “We have to use the tools at our disposal.”
