Virus keeping medical staffers busy
Davidson County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and the Emergency Department at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist — Lexington Medical Center have been seeing a lot more COVID-19 patients in the past six weeks as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads.
For the first two weeks of September, EMS logged 30 Covid-related calls a day, according to Mark Robbins, operations manager. “That doesn’t mean those were all positive cases but it means patients had symptoms or thought they had it,” he explained.
In August, calls that usually average 77 a day jumped to an average of 103 — 26 more calls per day than typical. “I’m sure a majority of that was Covid-related,” Robbins noted.
At the local hospital, the emergency department has had up to 150 patients a day for the month of August and the first two weeks of September, according to Natalie Borders, marketing manager. The typical daily average is 100 to 110 patients.
This spike in patients is problematic because many people are showing up in the emergency department to get Covid-19 tests when they don’t have symptoms but want negative test results to allow them to get back to work or school after being exposed to the virus.
“A lot of people are sick and truly need a test because they are in respiratory distress or having other serious symptoms,” she said. “That’s not who we are talking about.”
With limited testing resources, Borders said what the hospital has on hand needs to be used for true emergencies and patients who need surgery, for example. She added that patients don’t often think about the cost of an emergency room visit or the risk they take to being exposed to the virus and other illnesses while waiting for hours for tests to be completed in the emergency department.
Borders said people who need test results but are asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms should go to urgent care facilities, pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens and the Ottendorf Laboratories site at the Davidson County Fairgrounds, 400 Greensboro St., to get tested. This site offers free testing seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The private company has a state contract to do the testing.
The latest Covid-19 statistics released Wednesday by the Davidson County Health Department show a mixed bag — the total number of cases diagnosed in the last 10 days was down from the previous 10-day period but the number of deaths was up and the vaccination rate has only increased slightly in recent months.
For the week of Sept. 15, 1,350 new cases were reported, which is down 220 cases from the week of Sept. 8. The number of cases had been steadily climbing since early August.
“I hope we have plateaued — we are encouraged to see the cases going down, but case numbers are just a piece of the puzzle,” explained Lillian Koontz, director of the local health department. “Not everybody chooses to get tested so some fly under the radar. We know that’s not the total number of cases.”
More disturbing, she offered, is that there were 17 more deaths reported in the latest survey compared to the previous one (a total of 253 deaths in the county since April 2020 compared to 236 the previous week). Koontz said the more contagious and deadly Delta variant is likely behind the higher number of deaths, especially among the unvaccinated.
The positivity rate, the percentage of the total number of tests that were positive during the survey, was 19 percent. That’s compared to 18.8 percent the previous week and up from 15.5 percent a month ago.
The percentage of the population in Davidson County fully vaccinated is 39 percent, while the percentage of partially vaccinated is 44 percent, which is up a few percentage points in the past month but well below state and national averages.
Koontz said the health department doesn’t do testing because of limited resources, which are focused on prevention through vaccination. While the demand for vaccinations has grown incrementally, she would like to see more people get the shots to protect themselves and others. She advises those who are considering vaccination to talk to their primary care physician or her staff at the department. “Our tools are limited and vaccines are the most effective tool we have to combat this virus,” she reiterated.
