Springfield’s health care workers say they are exhausted as the COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year.
They say they’ve never seen more death, and they’ve fought politics that hindered efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Based on that experience, they say the public should temper any optimism about the latest drop in new COVID-19 cases and indications that the omicron variant is less severe overall than the delta variant.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re seeing signs of decreasing activity in the community,” said Dr. Rajesh Govindaiah, senior vice president and chief physician executive for Memorial Health.
But he said, “Coronavirus has taught us the value of humility. It has fooled us once, and it could fool us again.”
Govindaiah and others in the local health care industry said people who are ignoring the statewide indoor mask mandate, shunning vaccinations and attending maskless parties and other similar events are inviting illness and prolonging the pandemic.
The average number of new COVID-19 cases in Illinois has dropped from an all-time daily high of more than 37,000 in mid-January to 17,687 on Jan. 28, with more declines expected, though it’s uncertain when or whether other variants will become prominent.
Hospitalizations statewide and in Sangamon County also are on the decline. But Springfield hospitals were at or near record levels in early January, and hospitalizations began to drop only in the past two weeks.
At 500-bed Springfield Memorial Hospital, 83 people with COVID-19 were inpatients in late January compared with all-time highs of more than 100 in early January and in November 2020.
At 422-bed HSHS St. John’s Hospital, the number of COVID-19 patients has been in the “low 50s” compared with a record of 83 in early January, according to Dr. Gurpreet Mander, chief medical officer at St. John’s.
The 31 reported deaths of Sangamon County residents related to COVID-19 in January exceeded the 27 deaths recorded in September 2021 during the delta variant surge, according to Jeff Wilhite, spokesman for the Sangamon County Department of Public Health.
The highest numbers of monthly fatalities were recorded before vaccines were widely available: 60 in December 2020, 43 in January 2021, and 35 in November 2020.
In many ways, the level of suffering nurses are seeing now is “as bad as it was in the beginning,” St. John’s Hospital intensive-care unit nurse Sally Tamizuddin said.
Added Dr. Vidya Sundareshan, a Springfield-based infectious-diseases specialist at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, who practices at both Springfield hospitals: “It’s been a hard time all the way around for everybody – our nurses, our respiratory therapists, food service in the hospital, case managers, discharge planners – everybody that’s in the hospital was stretched thin.”
Govindaiah said omicron is infecting more people than other variants, and patients requiring hospitalization with the omicron variant are just as sick as patients with delta, he said.
The majority of hospitalized patients have either had no vaccine or lack the recommended doses or boosters, he said.
About 62% of Sangamon County residents are fully vaccinated, similar to the percentage of Illinois residents who are fully vaccinated. More than one-third of Sangamon County adults ages 18 through 64 aren’t fully vaccinated, and most of those adults have received no vaccine, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Govindaiah said he had hopes for “broad adoption of vaccination when it was first rolled out a year ago. … What we’ve seen is that vaccination is no longer about the merits of vaccination. It’s a proxy for the societal divisions we have right now.”
Today’s hospitalized patients, on average, are younger – in their 50s and 60s – than the patients in their 80s and older during the November-December 2020 surge, Tamizuddin said. And children are not immune to complications.
Betsy Vogt, 34, of Sherman, blames her 2-year-old son Gabe’s recent hospitalization for COVID-19 on a lack of precautions in the community that kept transmission levels high.
Gabe, who is too young to be vaccinated, apparently was infected while he was at day care, said his mother, a speech pathologist in the Ball-Chatham School District. Gabe was hospitalized at HSHS St. John’s Children’s Hospital for COVID-related breathing problems Jan. 16-20.
Betsy Vogt said it’s unfortunate, but understandable, that masking and vaccinations aren’t more widely accepted.
“I know everyone is tired and they want the ‘normal’ to come back,” she said. “But know that your actions have repercussions, and that your actions could put a small child in the hospital.”
Registered nurse Mandy Myers, 45, cares for children with COVID at St. John’s and is fully vaccinated, but some of her relatives won’t get a shot or wear a mask.
“It has become such a political issue,” she said.
The children’s hospital has seen an increase in COVID-19-related admissions in recent weeks, with a half-dozen children hospitalized at any one time, according to Dr. Douglas Carlson, an SIU faculty member who is the hospital’s medical director.
Carlson said he knows some parents are resistant to COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots for their children 5 and older, as well as masks for the youngsters when in school, but he is a proponent of all of those measures.
“While most kids do well with COVID, you don’t want your kids to get COVID,” he said.
Nurses are hearing unvaccinated COVID-19 patients say they feel guilty about minimizing the risks of COVID-19 and downplaying the value of vaccinations based on what they read on the internet, Tamizuddin said.
“They feel like they’ve been misled,” she said. “A lot of them felt they would never get sick.”
Memorial Urgent Care locations were deluged with patients in early January who worried they had COVID-19, clinical director Dr. Anna Richie said. Almost 3,000 COVID-19-positive cases were diagnosed in one week, the busiest of the pandemic, she said.
Urgent Care staff members still encounter resistance to a potential COVID-19-positive test result “every five minutes,” Richie said. “There’s still some disbelief or even resistance to being tested.”
Health care workers continue to stress the benefits of vaccinations and boosters, Mander said, noting that unvaccinated people are 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who are vaccinated.
Nurses continue to care for COVID-19 patients regardless of their vaccination status, Tamizuddin said, “but it’s just disappointing that we cannot save some people who could have been saved.”
The staff at St. John’s continues to put forth its best effort through teamwork that has drawn everyone closer, she said.
Richie said her Memorial Health staff’s “dedication to help others – it doesn’t matter if the patients are vaccinated or not vaccinated, present with simple symptoms or have a complicated presentation, or if it’s the provider’s third shift in a row – the compassion for helping others is as strong as ever. There is a dedication that has become more transparent during the recent surge.”
Tamizuddin said St. John’s staff members renew their spirits when they applaud for a COVID-19 patient who leaves the ICU or the hospital, she said.
“It’s a gift from God or whatever you believe in,” she said, “because some people don’t get out alive.”
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer for Illinois Times. Contact him at dolsen@illinoistimes.com.
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