Intensive care unit admissions for COVID-19 recently hit an all-time high in Idaho. Coronavirus cases have barreled upward. And hospitals are “dangerously close” to a resource crisis.
That’s how state officials and data portray the state’s latest surge of new COVID-19 cases. The hyper-infectious delta variant is infecting and sending predominantly unvaccinated people to overwhelmed hospitals. People are becoming infected at such high rates that even contact tracers across Idaho are struggling to keep pace.
“We are dangerously close to Crisis Standards of Care,” state health department Director Dave Jeppesen told reporters Tuesday.
Crisis Standards of Care is a formalized plan to ration scarce and potentially life-saving resources to save those with the best chances of survival.
Officials are pleading for people to get vaccinated. Idaho officials also are asking people to volunteer to help stressed hospitals by visiting volunteeridaho.com.
“If the question is how close are we to hospital capacity? I would say we are over hospital capacity right now,” Jeppesen later said.
Idaho has added an average of 657 new coronavirus cases each day over the past week, according to the Post Register’s count of Idaho Department of Health and Welfare data. On Aug. 1, the state’s seven-day rolling case average was 333. That means cases have almost doubled this month already.
A total of 422 Idahoans were being treated for COVID-19 in hospitals last Thursday, according to state data. One-hundred-thirty of them were in the ICU. ICU virus admissions on Wednesday were 140 in Idaho, a record high for the pandemic.
At least 2,301 Idahoans have died from COVID-19, state figures show.
Test positivity rates for Idaho rose to 12.8% the week ending in Aug. 14, up from 4.3% in early July. National health experts say when 5% or less of tests return positive, then testing is adequate. In kids of all age groups, test positivity rates have also risen, said Dr. David Peterman, CEO of Primary Health Medical Group in southwest Idaho.
“From my perspective, any child that’s admitted to the hospital and certainly, any death is preventable,” Peterman said. “… Of course I support vaccinations, but we can stop this in its tracks right today, right now if I wear a mask and you wear a mask. If everyone wears masks, in all instances, and particularly in school and inside. There’s just no other way to put it.”
About 53% of Idahoans age 12 and up have received at least one vaccine dose, compared to 71% nationally. Idaho has the fourth-lowest adult partial vaccination rate (57.9%) in the nation, according to the CDC’s count.
But the number of new Idahoans getting vaccinated has risen substantially, according to data compiled by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
Idaho vaccine providers administered almost 26,000 doses the week ending in Aug. 15, state data show. In the second to last week of July, providers gave out 16,000 doses, the data shows. It’s the highest vaccine administration rate since early June. At the height of vaccinations, in early April, providers gave out nearly 97,000 shots in one week.
So far, at least 2,517 people have received a third vaccine dose in Idaho, said Sarah Leeds, the head of Idaho’s vaccine program. The state is not sure that all of the third-shot recipients are immunocompromised. The CDC’s guidance on third vaccine doses, for now, is that only immunocompromised people receive them because they may not have the same immune response to the two-shot vaccine as those who aren’t immunocompromised.
After the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the mRNA Pfizer/Bio-N-Tech vaccine on Monday, Gov. Brad Little released a video statement to Idahoans promoting the vaccine as a product of former President Donald Trump’s leadership that was vetted by experts. An early August poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that while 86% of Democrats had already received a COVID-19 vaccine, only 54% of Republicans had.
“President Donald Trump last year boldly moved our country forward with Operation Warp Speed — the first-ever public-private partnership of its kind — to enable faster approval and production of COVID-19 vaccines during the global pandemic,” Little said in the statement. “Today, we reached the culmination of President Trump’s leadership.”