Pima County intensive care unit beds are shrinking in availability as COVID hospitalizations remain high.
Pima County Health Department Director Dr. Theresa Cullen reported that only eight ICU beds were available countywide during a Dec. 1 press conference.
“We’ve had less than 5% ICU bed availability for the past 42 days,” Cullen said.
Epidemiologist Dr. Joe Gerald, a professor in the UA Zuckerman School of Public Health who has been tracking COVID cases since the virus first arrived in Arizona, reported that as of Dec. 1, 31% of Arizona’s general ward beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients, a 5% increase from the previous week. Gerald also reported only 5% of Arizona’s general ward beds remained available for use, which he called “a new all-time low.”
Gerald urged people to get vaccinated or a booster shot.
“Vaccination remains the most important public health priority to reduce transmission and severe illness,” Gerald wrote in his Dec. 4 weekly report.
“However, mask mandates, restrictions on indoor gatherings, and targeted business mitigations are also needed to reduce/control transmission in the short-run with the primary goal being to avoid overwhelming our critical care facilities.”
Health officials worry that holiday celebrations coupled with snowbird populations in Arizona could put even more pressure on already stressed hospitals.
“If we look at the trends in the last decade, you will see hospital admissions go up, people get the flu, they get respiratory problems, they have a heart attack, senior citizens fall and break an arm or a leg and we accommodate those, but now there is no ability to accommodate as we have in the past,” Professor of Public Health and former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona said during the Nov. 29 University of Arizona status update.
Pima County reports that more than 99% of residents 65 and older are fully vaccinated. They hope this will decrease the need for COVID-related hospital visits from this age group. Cullen advised Pima County residents to get a booster shot if they have already received the first two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Pima County expanded booster availability by offering boosters to everyone 18 and older.
Omicron concerns
The newly discovered Omicron variant has been labeled a variant of concern by the World Health Organization. The variant was identified by South African scientists, but this does not mean the variant developed in South Africa.
Cullen reported that as of last week, Omicron had not been found in Pima County. The county was made aware of the new variant over Thanksgiving weekend. Cullen said TGen, the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Flagstaff, is doing viral sequencing for Pima County and will be able to identify Omicron from testing samples.
There is speculation the new variant may decrease the efficacy of the vaccines due to new mutations. However, health officials still recommend the vaccines to protect from COVID-related mortality and hospitalizations. Delta remains the most prevalent variant in Pima County and the United States.
New Vaccine Center and Monoclonal Antibodies
The Pima County Health Department, in partnership with the City of Tucson, is offering free COVID-19 vaccines at the Tucson Convention Center.
The vaccine clinic is in the TCC east lobby, 260 S. Church Ave., adjacent to the DoubleTree Hotel, and will operate Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Free parking is available in the Lot A Garage, accessible from Church Avenue.
The Pima County Health Department also reached out to the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response from the U.S. Department of Human and Health Services to request federal support for monoclonal antibody treatments. Cullen said the county will receive two teams to administer monoclonal antibodies and one team should arrive within the next seven to ten days.
Monoclonal antibodies help those infected with COVID by blocking the virus from attaching to human cells and slowing the virus’s reproduction. The treatment mimics the body’s natural immune response in a faster, more effective way.
Pima County has several requirements to receive monoclonal antibodies: patient must test positive for SARS-CoV-2; they are within 10 days of symptoms appearing; be at least 12 years old and weigh at least 88 pounds; and be at high risk of getting very sick from COVID infection.
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2021.
The sad truth is many people have decided they simply do not care. They seem to have decided that yes, covid is real and it may be a problem, but they just do not care. They’d rather try to ignore it as much as possible, and get annoyed when anyone even tries to mention the topic.
People have become too desensitized to stories of death and destruction around the world. Most media has worked overtime to show heart-wrenching videos and graphic representations to reflect the magnitude of the global pandemic, but nothing can compete with the political and economic machinations of bad governments and corporations, as well as the endless stories about celebrities (real and imagined) to distract us from the growing death rates.
Say what you will about the Black Death, but when you had the smell of death and burning bodies filling the air, funeral pyres turning night into day and panicked people fleeing the plague-ridden towns, villages and cities to escape what seemed to be the end of the world, a public service announcement from the CDC or WHO gets lost in the noise, especially the noise of those who deny there is anything happening at all.
Even in the Black Death (Bubonic plague), with a case fatality rate of 50%, life returned to normal in many communities after a year. People resigned themselves to their fate.
There is just an incredible course in the Great Courses series on Amazon Video (36 classes if you can believe that) that lays out in fascinating detail the entire plague.
Sooner or later, life will go on. Hiding in a cave is not life.
We all have at least one date with Covid, with a case fatality rate of 1.1% (not vaccinated) and 0.1% (vaccinated) and likely, many dates.
I’d just as soon that mine be as far in the future as possible. So, I ignore the advice of our public health professionals. I wear a well-fitted N95 mask everywhere I go.
I am vaxxed and boostered.
But, knowing more now than I knew 10 months ago, I don’t believe that I would have gotten vaxxed if I were to do it all over again.
The data coming out of South Africa tells the story. They have index values for the ability of your body to resist Covid. For those vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, these index values fell from 600 to 15. Essentially zero. My vaccine is worthless.
But, for the super-immune, these index values fell from 34,000 to 1,000. yes, that’s not a typo, thirty-four thousand. Even under attack by the slippery Omicron, the super-immune still have resistance 70% greater than the vaccinated folks under attack by Delta.
Who are the super-immune? They are people who have been infected by Covid and then waited at-least six months and then were vaccinated. The immune system is an infinitely complex beast.
The prediction of the scientific community, fascinated by these people, desperately trying to duplicate their immunity, is that these super-immune people are immune for all possible future variants of Covid.
According to the CDC, there are four actual Covid infections for every recorded Covid infection. That’s a lot of asymptomatic infection! It also means that there are millions of people in Arizona’s population of 7.4 million with a path to super-immunity- if they wait six months to get vaccinated.
You can read all about super-immunity in this issue of Nature.com, one of the nation’s premier scientific journals:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021…
Perhaps the iCU’s wouldn’t be so full if hospital administrators wouldn’t mandate patients from out of state be admitted despite lack of staff to take care of them