A COVID-19 COMMENTARY

Good news, bad news on a local level

Posted 11/25/20

THE GOOD NEWS: Hermann Hospital will continue to care for hospitalized patients with COVID, but we have limited beds, staff and do not have an ICU.

We follow current inpatient care guidelines for …

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A COVID-19 COMMENTARY

Good news, bad news on a local level

Posted

THE GOOD NEWS: Hermann Hospital will continue to care for hospitalized patients with COVID, but we have limited beds, staff and do not have an ICU.
We follow current inpatient care guidelines for treatment of COVID 19, including drugs to prevent blood clots, dexamethasone, and when appropriate convalescent plasma and/or Remdesivir. Convalescent plasma is part of our blood and is taken from people who had COVID and now have protective antibodies.
Remdesivir is an antiviral drug given as a daily IV (intravenous) infusion typically for 5 to 10 days, and only benefits very sick patients — those who require extra oxygen and who need to be in the hospital.
It is important to start Remdesivir early in the course of a serious case of COVID, to see the benefits. The majority of patients we have treated with these drugs have recovered and returned home.
In addition, we are finalizing the details of being able to provide outpatient treatment for people who have tested positive for COVID, and are at high risk of complications, but are not yet sick enough to require hospitalization with monoclonal antibodies (similar to the drug Regeneron President Trump received when he had COVID). 
Also, recent updates suggest safe and effective vaccines will be available over the coming months.
THE BAD NEWS: One million people in the United States were diagnosed with coronavirus infection in the last week.
We have seen this translate into record high numbers of people testing positive at the Hermann Area District Hospital testing center over the last several weeks. This will likely lead to increased hospital admissions and deaths in the coming weeks.
Due to increased disease across the state, Missouri is currently in the midst of a crisis in terms of ICU bed availability. This means there is a lack of ICU and step-down beds, including ventilator capabilities, for both COVID as well as non-COVID patients.
We recently stabilized a patient at our hospital with emergency surgery, but the first eight hospital systems we contacted had no beds for this young patient who needed ICU monitoring and didn’t have COVID.
OUR RECOMMENDATION:The most important way to avoid potential complications from COVID continues to be prevention. With the holiday season approaching, as difficult and different as it may sound, the best medical and public health advice to follow at this time is to have Thanksgiving and Christmas with one’s immediate family members only and postpone any extended family celebrations at least until we start seeing the number of cases go down. Our sincere hope is to have most people vaccinated by next summer, and we’re working on planning Christmas in July with our families.