I treat COVID patients in Kansas City, many unvaccinated. I see the situation is dire

Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard reports from medical professionals across the country about the increasing numbers of patients severely affected by COVID-19, as well as dwindling resources to care for them. The Kansas City area is no exception, and the current surge of delta variant cases is beginning to impact our abilities to care for patients across all levels of the health care system.

This is not a partisan issue. Unless we all act together to fight this pandemic, the darkest days still lie ahead.

I work in maternal-fetal medicine. My job is to take care of women with medically complex, high-risk pregnancies. I work in tertiary care centers where we care for the sickest of the sick: pregnant women with critical heart diseases, uncontrolled high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as those at risk for delivering extremely premature infants or infants with problems that will require immediate medical attention after birth.

However, over the past several weeks, this has not been the group of patients I have been treating, as our labor and delivery unit has been inundated with COVID-19 patients. One week this month, these people accounted for 75% of the hospitalized patients I cared for. Every single one of them required some level of respiratory support. Four of them required admission to the intensive care unit. Two of them ended up on ventilators. Two of them required emergency cesarean sections in the ICU, resulting in deliveries of premature babies. None of them was vaccinated.

We are losing the fight against this virus. Hospitals across the nation, including ours, are at maximum capacity. Beds are full. Units are short-staffed. On more than one occasion this month, we were unable to accept patient transports because of a lack of space and staff to care for them. This means that critically ill patients, whether they have COVID-19 or any other medical problem, are unable to obtain the higher levels of specialty care that they need to save their lives or prevent major long term complications or disability.

The most tragic part of all of this is that it is preventable. We have safe vaccines available that can help to reduce the viral spread, disease severity and mortality rates from COVID-19. Millions of people have received these vaccines worldwide, including more than 139,000 pregnant patients in the U.S. Never in the history of the world have there been better-studied vaccines.

As a health care provider, it is devastating to watch patients suffer from this horrible disease when we know that we have a safe, effective tool to fight it. I am begging you to please get vaccinated — if not for your own safety, then for the safety of those you love and the community we share.

If you are hesitant about receiving the vaccine, or have questions about its safety or effectiveness, please contact a health care provider you trust to get more information.

Emily M. Williams is an obstetrician/gynecologist working in the field of maternal-fetal medicine in Kansas City.