Here & Now

Wisconsin Hospitals Reach Capacity in the New Year

Frederica Freyberg:

COVID-19 infections are exploding in Wisconsin with record high daily case numbers topping 12,000, the most since the start of the pandemic. The highly infectious Omicron variant is blamed for the explosive infection rate. It’s reported to cause less severe symptoms but the sheer case count is starting to hobble schools and hospitals. What is the latest in Wisconsin on COVID-19? For that we turn to Dr. Jeffrey Pothof, the chief quality and safety officer for UW Health, one of the largest health care systems in the state. Thanks very much for joining us.

Jeffrey Pothof:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is the current situation with your hospital?

Jeffrey Pothof:

You know, I wish I could paint you a nice picture but right now, we’re in a really rough spot. Our number of COVID-19 admissions has increased dramatically over the last week and a half to two weeks. We’re teetering with those record volumes we had last Thanksgiving. To make further — or make matters further worse, our hospital was already more full to start with. And our staff, although thankfully vaccinated, are having breakthrough cases, which is making our staffing problems even worse. So we’re in a situation where there are folks around the state calling us and saying, “Hey, can you take my patient? They’re complex. You have the expertise to deal with their problem.” And we cannot safely take them. They’re having to wait where they’re at or find a different hospital to take them because we just cannot take that next patient

Frederica Freyberg:

That is extremely scary, of course, for the people who need the services of the hospital for things like stroke or heart attack. Tell us what is happening with that.

Jeffrey Pothof:

Yeah. So you know, what we try to do when we can’t take patients physically to our location is we provide as many resources as we can to those patients where they are, whether that’s our experts available by telehealth, whether that’s coordinating with other health systems across the state, even outside the state to help find that next bed, providing our helicopters to promote transports to far away hospitals that might have a room. We’re doing things like that but ultimately what that means is that folks who otherwise would get a different standard of care are getting a little bit less than that. Folks doing the best that they can but unless we can reduce hospitalizations in the state, that’s, you know, that’s the best we can do right now.

Frederica Freyberg:

You know, we understand that these symptoms of the Omicron variant, COVID-19 are less severe and yet, your hospitalizations are up dramatically, you say. Is that just as a result of the sheer number of infections?

Jeffrey Pothof:

It is. And I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding. When folks hear that Omicron is less severe, I think they immediately think well it’s more like a cold. It doesn’t make people sick. Why are hospitals worried? That’s not what we mean when we say less severe. When we say less severe, we mean if you take 100 people and you give them Omicron, a lower percent of those people will need a hospital bed but it’s not to say Omicron cannot cause severe disease. Then when you take the extra cases we’re seeing, Omicron is so much more contagious, we’re actually seeing an increase in hospitalizations despite Omicron being less severe in general.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is this like for the staff there on the front lines?

Jeffrey Pothof:

It’s difficult. You can imagine, you know, we have a lot of staff that are out either getting tested or they’ve tested positive. They want to get back to work. We’re working with them on that. They’re typically not overly sick. They’re all vaccinated but that means those health care workers who are left are working more shifts and coming back quicker to do another shift and stretching themselves a little bit more thin. And you know, throughout this pandemic, these health care workers have been heroes and they continue to step up to the plate but it’s hard and we’ve lost a lot of people to burnout because there’s just only so much you can expect of a human being. This pandemic has certainly not been short.

Frederica Freyberg:

Have you ever seen anything like this in your career?

Jeffrey Pothof:

Not only have I never seen anything like this, this wasn’t even on my radar going through medical training. We have one of the most well-resourced health care systems in the entire world, and to think we’re at the point where people who need care for things like heart attacks, strokes, might not be able to get it, that never crossed my mind when I was going through medical training that that would be the scenario where I work.

Frederica Freyberg:

You know, we have read that it is the unvaccinated that are taking up the bulk of the hospitalizations for COVID-19. Is that accurate?

Jeffrey Pothof:

It’s definitely accurate. You know, we do see more breakthrough cases with Omicron. They often don’t get admitted. When they do get admitted, it’s often for a very short period of time: a day, two days. What we see with the unvaccinated is they make up a significant majority of the cases admitted to the hospital and they don’t stay just for a day or two days. Sometimes they stay for a week, two weeks. Sometimes months on high-end therapies that take a lot of our room up and a lot of our staff resources up and if we could reduce that, we’d be able to make all these other things fit. Folks in the state wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not a hospital is going to be ready for them when they suffer their medical emergency.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is it your expectation that this Omicron will burn quickly through the population and we could come out on the other side to quieter days?

Jeffrey Pothof:

I hope that is the silver lining. That is the experience they had in South Africa. I’m hopeful that, you know, this goes on for a few more weeks and then things start to taper down. We get a little bit more back to normal. Or maybe like we were this summer. But, you know, it’s going to be a rough couple of weeks before we get there. I’m not looking forward to that period of time.

Frederica Freyberg:

Good luck to you and all of you there providing care, Dr. Jeffrey Pothof. Thanks very much.

Jeffrey Pothof:

Thank you.