KU hospital is treating 100 COVID-19 patients — a new record — as situation grows dire
The University of Kansas Hospital broke three grim records Monday: the total number of hospitalized coronavirus patients, those in the ICU and the number of virus patients on ventilators, health officials said.
Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control at The University of Kansas Health System, said as of Monday morning, they had 139 COVID-19 patients in their hospital.
Of the 100 patients deemed active coronavirus cases, 46 are in the intensive care unit, and 26 of those in the ICU are on a ventilator, Hawkinson said. In addition to the 100 active cases, 39 others are in recovery.
For comparison, there had been 78 COVID-19 patients at KU Hospital on Friday. Just weeks earlier, on Nov. 4, KU Hospital had announced that the 44 COVID-19 patients they were treating then was an all-time high.
Area hospitals were already contending with capacity concerns, and nurses and health care workers suffering from burnout as the number of coronavirus cases have continued to surge in recent weeks.
On Sunday, the Kansas City metropolitan area added 1,222 confirmed COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of people infected with the virus to more than 75,000.
To date, at least 75,126 people have been infected with the novel coronavirus in the metro area, which encompasses Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas.
Across the metro, 949 people have died from the disease.
“How is this different from a bad flu season?” David Wild, vice president of performance improvement for the University of Kansas Health System, has said. “A bad flu season requiring a lot of hospitalizations never had 125 patients needing to be hospitalized at the same time.”
Steve Stites, chief medical officer at The University of Kansas Health System, said many hospitals in Kansas City metropolitan area and Lawrence struggled with not having enough ventilators this past weekend.
“We were taking patients from all sorts of strange places over the weekend,” Stites said. “It’s tough out there right now.”
He said about two-thirds of their current patients are from the metro area. But some of the remaining third are even from out of state in cases where the patient “simply couldn’t find a bed between here and there,” Stites said.
“It is a critical time right now because really, things are hanging in the balance as hospitals are overcrowded and we’re having a harder and harder time finding a place to take care of patients,” he said.
As of Sunday, the seven-day rolling average for new cases in the metro sat at 1,199. One week ago, it was 1,116. Two weeks ago, it was 795.
Stites said the impact of a staggering average of 1,200 new cases a day likely won’t be reflected in the ICUs for another several weeks.
He warned that more difficult conversations are ahead if the hospital numbers continue to trend upward, noting that heart attack and car crash patients will still need medical care, too, as the growing number of coronavirus patients take up more and more hospital beds.
“I think we’re approaching being really in trouble,” Stites said.
Both Stites and Hawkinson expressed concerns around the quickly-approaching Thanksgiving holiday. They urged everyone to listen to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to avoid traveling and gathering in large groups over the long weekend.
“Right now, we’re on fire,” Stites said, repeating a dire warning as he again asked the community to wear masks, keep socially distanced and to wash their hands.
Across the country, more than 12.2 million people have contracted the virus and roughly 256,800 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. Globally, more than 58.8 million people have tested positive for the virus and more than 1.3 million have died.
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 12:13 PM with the headline "KU hospital is treating 100 COVID-19 patients — a new record — as situation grows dire."
