BELLINGHAM, Wash — Bellingham’s PeaceHealth St. Joseph’s emergency room is the busiest any of the employees there have ever seen it.
That’s in part because of a sudden baby boom. This week, 18 babies were born in the hospital in just 36 hours.
“This has never happened before,” says Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sudhakar Karlapudi. “I’m hoping it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Dr. Karlapudi says the flood of patients this week created a capacity issue, with nearly 10% of the hospital’s beds currently occupied by COVID-19 patients.
That prompted Karlapudi to send an email to staff delaying “all (non-critical) surgical and procedural interventions.” Hospital staff started looking for beds in other western Washington hospitals, and few were available.
“We found that our colleagues down the I-5 corridor that we typically transfer patients to were also experiencing similar capacity,” says Karlapudi.
One of those hospitals is Providence Medical Center in Everett, where over the past six weeks the hospital has gone back to capacity levels not seen since before the pandemic. Hospital executives say that's mainly due to elective surgeries.
“We’ve been fairly busy which is not unusual for us,” said Providence CEO Darren Redick.
A fourth COVID-19 wave brought 33 patients to Providence. However, Redick does not believe there is a need to worry about emergency rooms in our area becoming overloaded.
“I think we’ve proven ourselves to be able to manage this under very difficult circumstances over the past year,” he said. “That gives me hope and confidence that we’ll be able to handle it in the future.”
One thing doctors are very concerned about, however, is the alarmingly low vaccination rate in Washington. Only about 1/3rd of the population is currently vaccinated, with interest apparently waning.
Dr. Karlapudi said that is a major determining factor in how full hospitals could get.
“The patients in this fourth wave that are requiring hospital-level care, ICU care, and sometimes dying, have not been vaccinated,” he said. “I do not know of a single patient who has been admitted to the hospital in this 4th wave who has received a vaccine.”
The need for people to get fully vaccinated is echoed back at Providence.
The virus remains too unpredictable, and frontline workers too weary to take any steps backward.
“There’s no reason for us to go through that level of strain and stress again,” Redick said.
PeaceHealth officials tell KING 5 everyone who needed emergency treatment this week received it, and doctors can expect capacity to be back to normal by Thursday.